TOLEDO (OH)
WTOL11 [Toledo, OH]
March 20, 2026
By Brian Dugger
The attorney who handled Father Gerald Robinson’s appeals points to DNA evidence, a possible alternate suspect and what he believes are flaws in the state’s case.
Editor’s note: This article is just part of a much larger story. Beginning March 23, you can stream the full documentary on WTOL 11+. The app is free and available on your phone or smart TV, giving you access to exclusive reporting, extended interviews, and the complete investigation.
Anyone who has spent any amount of time in Lucas County courtrooms over the past 50 years has seen Richard Kerger.
He’s a regular visitor to those courtrooms.
But the longtime defense attorney did not seek out the Father Gerald Robinson case. The case came to him.
“I had seen John Donahue do an argument in the court of appeals a couple of years earlier, and I was very impressed by him,” Kerger says. “He did an excellent job, and I wrote him a note to that effect. And then in 2007, out of the blue, John contacted me and asked if I would assist in the Robinson case. I was only vaguely aware of the Robinson case. I hadn’t been involved in the earlier case. I was aware of it, of course, but that’s all.”
Kerger agreed to help. What began as a professional courtesy soon pulled him into one of Toledo’s most high-profile criminal cases. At first, he served as support for Donahue, the veteran appellate attorney leading the effort.
“I had signed on to be second mate,” Kerger says.
Then Donahue died in 2011. The responsibility shifted overnight.
“Suddenly I was the captain of the ship,” Kerger says. “I frankly felt woefully inadequate for the task compared to having John. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of everything in that case, and it showed in the briefs he wrote. It was a pleasure working with him. I’m sorry he’s gone, but I was there, and I wasn’t going to back out of it.”
By that point, Kerger had already reached a firm conclusion about the man he was representing.
“Contrary to many other people, I’m absolutely convinced he was innocent,” he says.
Kerger bases that belief partly on his personal experience with Robinson. Over the years, he met with him repeatedly while pursuing appeals and post-conviction relief. The priest he encountered did not match the image of a man capable of a brutal killing.
“He was a small, timid man, with very petite features,” Kerger says. “I mean, I could put my hand and circle his wrist without any difficulty. And yet he supposedly stabbed this nun to death.”
The physical reality of the crime never aligned, in Kerger’s mind, with the man he knew.
“It requires strength that I don’t think he had.”
Kerger describes Robinson as quiet and withdrawn.
“He was very quiet,” Kerger says. “It took probably five or six years before I could get him to laugh at something I said.”
In the courtroom, Robinson chose not to testify. Kerger says that decision reflected fear, not strategy.
“He was terrified at speaking in public, which for a priest is odd, but that just bothered him,” Kerger says. “Now, I suppose, somebody might say, well, that was because he was guilty. No, it’s just because he was terrified of it.”
As Kerger studied the case record, he found what he believed were fundamental problems with the state’s theory. Some involved evidence that prosecutors highlighted. Others involve evidence he believes investigators overlooked or lost.
One detail stands out to him: a missing pair of scissors from a sewing kit at Mercy Hospital.
“What was missing, and not reported to be missing by Father Swiatecki, was a pair of scissors from a sewing kit, a very sharp pair of scissors that was never found,” Kerger says. “Could they lend themselves to being a murder weapon? Yeah. More than that blunt, triangular-shaped letter opener.”
Kerger cannot reconcile the state’s theory that Robinson used the letter opener and then kept it for decades.
“If you posit that he did it, why would he get rid of the scissors and keep the letter opener? If he’s going to get rid of one, he’s going to get rid of both.”
Another piece of evidence troubles him even more: DNA discovered under Sister Margaret Ann Pahl’s fingernails.
“The only evidence developed between 1980, when this thing happened, until the case was actually tried 25-plus years later, was DNA evidence,” Kerger says. “And the DNA evidence exonerated Father Robinson and left a huge question.”
That question centers on the presence of DNA from an unknown male.
“It’s not there by accident,” Kerger says. “That would seem like a fair indication of reasonable doubt.”
Asked how that DNA could have gotten there, he offers only one explanation.
“The only one I can think of is because she scratched him. And she scratched him trying to defend herself. That literally is the only way I can think of anybody, anybody, not just in this case. You don’t walk around with the skin of another human being under your fingernails by accident.”
When asked who he believes committed the crime, Kerger does not hesitate to name another priest.
“Well, the best theory I have is Father Swiatecki,” he says.
Kerger points to what he believes are key differences between the two men.
“He had a temper. He was a large man. He had a collection of knives that he used for woodworking. And I’m told that he, on occasion, had a problem with alcohol.”
Kerger also believes Sister Margaret Ann confronted someone over what she viewed as the desecration of Good Friday services. A witness says she was shaking and crying after a priest cut short the service.
“He would not have liked to have been upbraided by Sister Pahl about anything,” Kerger says. “He wouldn’t have liked to have been upbraided by anybody.”
Kerger speaks with Robinson for the last time a few days before the priest dies in 2014 at the prison medical unit. The moment leaves a lasting impression.
“He was resigned,” Kerger says. “He had his Catholic belief firmly in his hand as he’s passing on. He’s ready to get to the good side.”
Robinson, he recalls, had spent his final days talking with other inmates.
“He felt, I think, that having been down in that area, the hospice section, he had a chance to talk to some of the other dying prisoners,” Kerger says. “It was sort of his ministry. That’s the kind of person he was.”
Years after the appeals end and the case fades from court dockets, Kerger’s conclusion remains unchanged.
Asked whether he still believes Robinson was innocent, he answers immediately.
“Yes,” he says. “Without hesitation.”