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  History of the Brooks Case  


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June 15, 2008: Robinson, suspect in Brooks case, was accused twice before

BY TIM POTTER

The Wichita Eagle

Starting nearly two years before Elgin Robinson Jr. was charged with capital murder in the death of pregnant, 14-year-old Chelsea Brooks, police investigated reports that he had taken indecent liberties with another minor and that a 16-year-old had accused him of rape.

In one of the cases, police had booked him into jail.

Authorities declined to file charges in both of the earlier cases, citing a lack of evidence or a lack of cooperation from a possible victim.

The information, recently obtained by The Eagle, comes from police reports and interviews with one of the alleged victims and parents of both teens.

When asked about the previous allegations, Robinson's defense lawyer, Val Wachtel, declined to comment.

Robinson, now 22, is accused of arranging a murder-for-hire. His capital murder trial is scheduled for September.

Last month, Ted Burnett, 51, was convicted of aggravated kidnapping and capital murder in Chelsea's death. A jury decided against the death penalty. A third defendant, Everett Gentry, now 19, has pleaded guilty to murder as a juvenile, avoiding the death penalty.

The first incident

In the first incident, in September 2004, Wichita police officers said they caught Robinson, then 18, in the back seat of his car with a 14-year-old girl whose pants were unbuttoned. A detective wrote in a report that both the girl and Robinson said he touched her vaginal area.

In an interview with The Eagle last week, the young woman identified as the victim in the 2004 case said she and Robinson had been "just friends." She is 18 now. She said she met him when she was "young and being dumb."

"I was walking down the street, and he asked me for my number," she said. She said she had invited him to a party, and that's how they had ended up at the park.

She said she'd had sex with Robinson about a week or two after the police caught them in the park and that at the time she hadn't thought it was wrong.

In a separate interview, her mother said she didn't push for a charge against Robinson, partly because her daughter said "she put herself in that situation."

In 2006, when the mother learned that Robinson was charged in the Chelsea Brooks murder case, she said, "Chills ran up and down my spine."

Rape accusation

In the other case, in August 2005, a 16-year-old contacted police from out of state and told them that a little over a month earlier Robinson forcibly raped her in a car.

The 16-year-old's mother, in an interview with an Eagle reporter, said her daughter didn't want to push for a charge against Robinson.

"She said, 'Mom, I don't want to go further with this.' So we left it alone," the mother said. "... I think she just wanted to put it behind her."

In the weeks after her daughter left Wichita that summer, Robinson tried to woo the 16-year-old, the mother said. She said she saw text messages in which Robinson said he wanted to marry her daughter.

The daughter, now 19, continues to live in another state.

"After she found out what happened to Chelsea, she wants no part of Wichita," her stepfather said.

The Eagle is not naming the teens because they were juveniles at the time the police reports were written.

About a week before police received the 16-year-old's rape allegation, Chelsea's parents came to the Patrol South Bureau and said they suspected that Robinson was having sex with their daughter, then 13, a police report shows.

Nearly a year later, in June 2006, she was dead - the victim of a homicide while nine months pregnant with Robinson's child. At the time, authorities were investigating allegations that she was a victim of underage sex and were waiting for her to give birth so they could conduct a paternity test.

Details of first case

According to police reports, the first case against Robinson began at about 2:30 a.m. Sept. 4, 2004. That's when officers saw Robinson during a check for violators in Emery Park, in southeast Wichita, after closing hours.

The officers' account: They spotted a maroon 1989 Oldsmobile illegally parked and saw Robinson push himself up in the back seat and a female "fumble" with her unbuttoned pants. Her shirt was pulled up.

Officers learned he was 18, she was 14.

During a pat-down search, they took as possible evidence a sealed condom from his pants pocket.

She told police that Robinson had undone her pants and pulled them down and had touched her "on the outside of the vagina."

She said her mother thought she was at a friend's house.

According to a police report, Robinson told a detective he got in the back seat, pulled down the 14-year-old's pants and told her, "I want to kick it with you."

The detective wrote in the report that Robinson "stated to me, 'I touched her vagina.' "

A police sergeant authorized that Robinson be booked into jail on suspicion of indecent liberties with a minor.

He was not charged in the case.

A brief entry in a police report said "case presented to ADA Parker and LOP'D on 9-8-04." Kim Parker is chief deputy district attorney. "LOP" is jargon for "lack of prosecution," meaning a police supervisor or prosecutor decided not to prosecute.

Another entry in the police report said the prosecutor declined to file charges because of a lack of evidence.

Parker said she couldn't comment on the case.

In general, she said, prosecutors consider factors such as the ages of the suspect and victim, the victim's level of cooperation and the weight of the evidence.

Under state law, when a suspect is under 19 and the victim is at least 14 - when there is no more than a four-year age difference - it becomes a less-ser ious felony, Parker said.

It becomes difficult to prosecute if the alleged victim is not willing to testify, Parker said.

Police Deputy Chief Tom Stolz said he could talk only in general about sex crimes against teens. "Crimes against children in our community are a priority in this Police Department, and we're going to investigate any allegation of a crime," he said.

But, he said, "You have to talk to the victim first. If the victim is not going to cooperate, that logjams the investigation."

The situation frustrates police and parents, he said, when they suspect a crime has occurred.

In most cases, girls don't cooperate with investigators. "What we find is they love these guys," Stolz said. "It's all part of the psychological dynamic of the 12- to 13- to 14-year-old. They don't think it's a crime.

"It makes these cases extremely difficult to prosecute."

Details of second case

About 11 months after the park incident, police learned of a second case involving Robinson, according to police reports.

On Aug. 3, 2005, a police detective took a phone call from a woman out of state, wanting to report the rape of her 16-year-old daughter more than a month earlier. The teen had been visiting a relative in Wichita.

By phone, the 16-year-old told the detective that between 10 and 11 p.m. around June 27, 2005, Robinson raped her in a car in south Wichita.

According to the report, the 16-year-old told a detective that while she was sitting with Robinson in the car, he grabbed her hands and got on top of her. That she told him to stop and get off of her. That he pulled her pants down while holding her arms and raped her.

Robinson was not charged in the case.

An entry in a police report said, "Clear LOP-Victim refused to cooperate."

Parker, the chief deputy district attorney, said there are no records of the case coming to the District Attorney's Office to determine whether charges could be filed.

Police can determine on their own not to pursue a charge if they don't think the evidence merits it, she said.

A mother's suspicion

On July 27, 2005 - about a week before the 16-year-old told police that Robinson had raped her - Chelsea's parents came to the Patrol South substation and reported that they suspected Robinson of having sex with their daughter.

Chelsea was 13 at the time. He was 19.

Police reports give this account: Chelsea's mother, Terri Brooks, said her daughter met Robinson through his stepsister.

When police asked Terri Brooks why she was suspicious, she gave several reasons, according to the police report. Among them:

That she had seen Chelsea talking to Robinson in a YMCA parking lot. That Chelsea was sometimes sneaking out. And that the mother of one of Chelsea's friends called to say that her daughter said Chelsea was having sex with Robinson.

After receiving the report, police went to the Robinson family home on South Erie, where they stopped Chelsea as she was leaving. Robinson also was there.

According to a police report, officers talked briefly with Robinson, who "felt there was some sort of misunderstanding and that people were making exaggerations about what was going on," a police report said. He cooperated with police.

A police supervisor contacted detectives with the Exploited and Missing Child Unit. The detectives were going to do "plenty of follow-up work" over the next day or two because Robinson and Chelsea were denying the allegations, a police report said.

Because of concern that Chelsea would run away and have contact with Robinson, the family allowed officers to take her to the Wichita Children's Home, the report said.

An officer wrote in a report that before he left the Robinson home, he told Robinson and his family "that it was in their best interest just to stay away from Chelsea and that if she did happen to runaway and show up at the residenc e that they should call 911 and have the police to intervene to help keep them out of any trouble."

About seven months later, on Feb. 13, 2006, Terri Brooks filed a petition for a protective order against Robinson. She wrote that Robinson had been having sex with her daughter for eight months, maybe longer.

"She is now pregnant and he is psychologically manipulating her to keep secret the fact that he is the father... . He has told her that he will die if he is put in jail," Brooks wrote.

In a place on the petition asking her to list any legal actions involving Robinson and minors, she wrote: "In 2004, he was caught in a park with a 14-year-old," apparently a reference to the incident with the other girl at Emery Park.