First 24 Hours
- 1. CHAPTER 5 - Bob (the first 24 hours) The day is June 29, 1974. Early that morning just before 7:00 A.M the phone rang, and I wondered “who on earth would be calling me so early on a Saturday? I answered the phone, and it was my sister, Barbara. “Happy Birthday Barb”, I exclaimed, but she replied, “It’s not so happy Neet, Bob is missing”. I asked, “He’s missing, what do you mean, missing?” “Well, he never came home from work last night, and Mom has been walking the floors all night. She said that when he hadn’t come home by midnight, she was getting worried that something was wrong, so she called the police to file a missing person report, but they said that he had to be missing for 24 hours before they would look for anyone.” Well, this is 1974, Bob had just graduated from high school two weeks earlier, and the police felt a 17 year old boy being out all night was nothing unusual, just an over reactive mother. Bob was not that kind of kid though. He was quite responsible, as far as a 17 year old goes, and always called if he was going to be late coming home, so this was out of the ordinary. I told Barb that I would get ready and come down to the house to be with Mom, as Barb had a baby at home to take care of. As I stood in the shower, a million thoughts were racing through my mind about what could have happened, and could only keep praying that my thoughts were wrong, and that he would be found, and everything would be all right. I drove down to the house in Cutler Ridge, the home we grew up in, and my mother was just sitting in the chair next to the front door, crying. She told me that by 3:00 A.M., she decided to ride down to the gas station that Bobby had been working at the night before, and found the lights were all on, and the door was open, but no sign of Bob or his car. She called the police again, and they went to the station to discover that it had been robbed. The cash register was open and empty, the desk drawers were open, and had been rifled through, and the cord to the floor fan had been cut off. Mom could not stop crying, she told me that she felt Bob’s spirit hover over her around 5:00 A.M., and he told her he was dead. She was torn with grief and worry, as was I. This is where my panic really took over, so I got her some coffee, and took off to round up my sisters. First one of my sisters who lived in Homestead at the time (Susie), and then we went together to get another sister who was living at the base in Homestead, with her 18 month old son. The three
- 2. of us headed back to Cutler Ridge to be with mom, and find out what was happening. Our brother, Ed, had been called, so he and his wife were on their way down as well. Now the police are focusing on the station as a robbery, and the station owner was notified. The police were questioning my mother, and treating Bob as a prime suspect for the robbery, even though the amount of money taken was less than $40.00, they figured he took the money, and took off. Bob had been left alone at the station that night, and was to close up at 9:00 P.M. He had plans to meet friends afterwards for a movie. They next called Louis, one of the friends that was to go to the movies, Louis’s and his girlfriend, Cindy. Both had gone by to see Bobby earlier that night before at the station, but he wasn’t out there, instead, there were three guys there, and told Louis that Bob was tied up working out back, and they were just there helping out until he was finished. Louis said he had never seen them before, and thought maybe bobby knew them, and they were just helping out. He and Cindy bought the story and went on their way, waiting for Bob to show up after work for the movie, but he never showed. Next in the line of questioning was a police officer from Station Four, just a few blocks from the Chevron gas station that was on US-1, just around the corner from where Franjo Road ended to the north. The officer had been off-duty the night before, and had stopped by the station to fill up his car and boat, as he was going fishing. He also had spoken to the three men that were there, asked where the kid was that usually worked there, and they told him the same story that Louis and Cindy had, so he finished getting his gas and went on, not thinking that anything was out of place. Meanwhile, back at home now, the four of us girls are there with our mother, making phone calls to anyone we could think of that may have seen or heard from Bob, but had no luck. Our brother-in-law, Nick, was a detective with the City of Miami police department, so when our oldest sister, Jean, was called earlier that morning, Nick became involved in the investigation. It was truly a very long day, as we paced and pondered what could have possibly happened. Barb and her husband had driven past the station the night before also, started to stop to say hi to Bob, but decided they had better keep going because they were on their way to dinner and a movie. Now we have not one, not two, but three chances for someone to have noticed that there was definitely something amiss about these strangers at the station, and no sign of Bobby. His sister passed but didn’t stop, Louis stopped but didn’t question further, and the off-duty policeman who stopped
- 3. had not picked up on the obvious clues that something was very wrong. The fact that the station had been robbed, and the only thing missing, besides the little bit of cash, was a machete the owner kept in his desk drawer, along with the cord to the floor fan. The police had roped off the gas station, and were treating it as a robbery scene. They found some chunks of coral rock in the back of the station with blood on them, so that brings in another frightful thought of “where was our brother, and what has happened to him”. Nick was notified by the Metro-Dade Police early that afternoon, that someone had reported finding a body on Key Biscayne (an island off the coast of downtown Miami), and wanted him to come along to see if it was Bob. The City of Miami had no jurisdiction on Key Biscayne, so that is why Metro-Dade escorted him with them to the crime scene. They found the body of a 17-year old boy lying face down next to his abandoned car, with his mouth gagged, his hands and feet bound with the cord off of the fan from the gas station. His knees were bent, as if they had him kneel down in front of them, before they took a shotgun, point blank to his chest, and blew him away. There were beer bottles all around the ground, his car hood open, the horn pulled out and lay on the ground next to his lifeless body. There were footprints all over the top of the trunk and hood, which were both open, as if they had stomped all over the car in an absolute free-for-all frenzy. His high school ring had been stripped from his finger, Class of ’74! His skull had been crushed in the back, apparently from the initial blow at the station from the chunk of coral rock, as well as blunts and bruises all over his body where they beat him with the car horn, and other objects. The trunk of his car was filled with blood, where they had put his body from the gas station, and from the apparent timeline of the abduction to time of death, they must have had a joy-ride around town before the final destination at Virginia Key on Key Biscayne, where they finished their crime. Around 2:00 P.M. Nick called to say he was on his way down, so we were dreading to hear what we had feared the most. As soon as the police car pulled up out front, we all ran outside, and came to a crashing halt in our footsteps the moment Nick stepped out of the car. He took one look at this broken family, dropped his head, and it was then “we knew”. He didn’t have to tell us, we knew the body that had been found was our baby brother. We hadn’t been told the details of the murder scene yet, that would come later, and can only thank God that it came later, not at that moment. Hysteria set in all around.
- 4. Our poor mother simply went into total shock, and could not function at all. I’m not sure which sister did what, as I was in so much shock, horror, disbelief, denial; you name it, my mind was going through it, but someone got hold of a doctor, and obtained medication for our mother. By now, it is approaching four in the afternoon, or somewhere around that time, I don’t really know. None of us had eaten all day, and hadn’t even thought about food. I decided that I just had to get out of there for a while, got in my car and drove back home, which was about thirty minutes away in Coconut Grove. When I got home, all I could do was try to release the anger, pain, grief, and denial of what was happening. I walked from room to room in the house, beating every door, every wall, every object I could find, until I beat my head against the door so many times, I was ready to black out. My husband came home, asked if they had found my brother yet, and I told him through uncontrollable sobs, of what I knew so far. The bottom line, “My brother is dead, dear God, my brother is dead”. Early the next morning I went back to Mom’s, as all of us were not leaving her alone for a moment. One of us was always there. The phone rang off the wall, as we had to recount to each caller, what we knew, and “yes” the news on the television the night before was Bobby. Around 10:00 A.M., a news crew from a local television station showed up at the front door, wanting to do a story with the family on how the news of this tragedy had affected the family. I wanted to hit these people. How did they THINK it affected us!! We were all still in a state of shock and disbelief, and of course made them leave immediately. I walked into the bedroom to check on my mom, and fell completely apart as I watched her lying there, wrenched in pain, and cry out, “what will I do, I don’t even have a place to bury him”. I fell to the bedside, sobbing along with her. Sometime during that Sunday afternoon, we contacted our Grandmother in Keystone Heights, gave her the news, and she was quite in shock as well. She had purchased a tract of burial plots years earlier at the family cemetery in Lake Butler, about 20 miles away, and that was where our father was buried, with a spot next to him which was to be our mother’s when it was her time. Mom got on the phone and asked Grandma if it would be okay to use her plot for Bob, and grandmother agreed. So began the preparation for the next five days. Numerous calls to make, funeral and casket arrangements, and all of the other details in preparing for a viewing in Miami,
- 5. getting the body transported to North Florida, and the final viewing and funeral in Keystone Heights. The newspaper didn’t do us any favors either with their headlines about the event that Sunday morning read; – “There’s Got to Be a Morning After” was playing on the radio, but there wouldn’t be one for Robert Marshburn… “. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Got to stop for a while, getting too emotional to continue through to the two wakes and the funeral. That is the short version of the first twenty-four hours!