Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Who Killed Melissa Trotter: Diana Robellar

Diana Robellar was nine years old. She was four feet, eleven inches tall. She weighed sixty pounds. She was just a little girl.


August 7, 1994
Around noon, Diana's aunt asked her to walk to the Wing Fong Market and buy a bag of sugar. The store was just two blocks up the road.

Diana began her walk near the point shown below, somewhere along the 6600 block of North Main Street in Houston.


She walked along the right hand sidewalk. About halfway to her destination, she passed the C&F Drive In. She was a bit of a regular there. Sometimes she would purchase groceries. Sometimes she would sell Chiclets. This time she just passed by as she walked to the Wing Fong Market just another block up the road.


The Wing Fong Market was on the corner of North Main Street and 29th Street, just at the freeway. The store is no longer there. Just a fenced in vacant lot now.


A store employee later confirmed that Diana had made it to the store, purchased a bag of sugar, and left.  Another witness confirmed that she had crossed 29th Street and was walking back along North Main towards her home.


Referring to the photo above, she walked down the sidewalk on the left hand side. She made it as far as the C&F Drive In.


Anthony Shore was there also, at that same place, at that same time. He was driving a van that belonged to the father of his live-in girlfriend. He saw the little girl walking along the sidewalk, carrying a bag of sugar home for her aunt.

October 25, 2003
Swaim: Do you know what street you're on?

Shore: I wanna say Main Street. North Main somewhere around 21st to 26th. I'm not really sure where in there. I know there is a parking lot and I pulled in and I talked to her and ... there wasn't anybody around and I don't know what the hell. I'm sitting there going ... the girl. I just picked her up, put her in the van. Nobody saw shit. And I told her to be quiet --

Swaim: Did you wrap anything around her or anything or just took her into --

Shore: I just threw her in initially and I told her to be quiet and that it was a kidnapping and that she wasn't going to get hurt, this and that. She made like she was gonna not cooperate so I remember using duct tape to bind her. Hands and feet. Then we drove around. I don't know where we ended up. I remember it was a big, big parking lot and a building. Looks like it had been vacated.

1440 North Loop West, Houston, TX
Rear View of Building where Dana Robellar was Murdered
Shore: And, uh, in the bay area where the trucks come back up and stuff. And I was going to molest her and she fought like hell. Strangely, she fought like hell. Just couldn't go on with anything. .. And I knew it wasn't going to happen, and she was so afraid, I'm sure. ... She fought and fought and I don't recall what type of cord or strand, a piece of wire or something. And the same thing, I knew I was fucked and I don't know why the shit kept happening. I couldn't stop it. I could say "Yeah, there are voices in my head," but it's my own sickness. [Ellipses in this paragraph are mine]

Swaim: You don't remember what, it was a cord, or --

Shore: But then I tried to have sex with her but it wasn't happening, wasn't happening. She just fought so bad, and she's so small, and I just said, "God, you sick fuck. What the hell is wrong with you? Why have you lost your fucking mind? And I just wanted, I just wanted it to end. I just couldn't, every time I'd tell myself, I'd just kept saying, "Oh, this has gotta stop. I'm a sick, sick puppy." There wasn't anyone around. I could've taken time. I could've done this or I could've done that and I had this sick, sick [thought] going through my head but I just wanted it to be over. I just wanted to get away from there. I knew I couldn't just let her go because I knew that, well obviously, she's gonna tell and then my life would be all fucked up. Just selfish, self-centered, fucked-up thinking, I know. So I did the ligature ... I drove around with [her stuff] the day before I got rid of it. And, once again, I threw it in a trash bag and I threw it in a Dumpster somewhere. [Ellipses in this paragraph are mine]

January 2, 2013
Anthony Shore claimed in his interview that he was unable to molest Diana Robellar. Once again, that was a bold-faced lie or a grand illusion. Little Diana had been violated both vaginally and anally. The coroner, however, found no semen. Perhaps Shore had begun to worry about leaving his DNA in his victims, and had begun to wear a condom.

Clearly this attack was substantially different than all the others. The age of the victim continued to drop. There was no pretense of building a relationship. There was no soothing talk to convince the victim that everything was going to be okay.

Shore went hunting for a victim. He had a van, not a car. He had duct tape to bind his victim, as he had the last time. He had a string and wooden dowel tourniquet at the ready. This time, he did not intend to fool around. He grabbed her off the street, raped her, strangled her, and dumped her body.

Every time it was different. Next time would be no exception.