Speaker 1: In the last two episodes of American Homicide, we shared
Speaker 1: the story of Maria Marshall. In nineteen eighty four, Maria
Speaker 1: was murdered at a rest stop off the Garden State
Speaker 1: Parkway in New Jersey. The same night Maria was killed,
Speaker 1: a man named Bobby Cumber was bowling with his wife
Speaker 1: some fourteen hundred miles away. Bobby Cumber did not murder
Speaker 1: Maria Marshall. The police knew it. Even the Marshall family
Speaker 1: knew it. So why did Bobby spend twenty years in
Speaker 1: prison for Maria's murder? I'm swung Glass. In this bonus
Speaker 1: episode of American Homicide, we'll explore the unlikely and unlucky
Speaker 1: story of Bobby Cumber. A warning that this episode contained
Speaker 1: some graphic content. Please take care while listening. After serving
Speaker 1: twenty five years in the Air Force, Bobby Cumber needed
Speaker 1: something to do, so he took a job working as
Speaker 1: a clerk and bookkeeper at a small hardware store outside Shreveport, Louisiana.
Speaker 2: It was kind of like a mom and pop kind
Speaker 2: of hardware store.
Speaker 1: Journalist Judy Peep wrote about Bobby Cumber.
Speaker 2: Bobby, at the time was living in Louisiana, even though
Speaker 2: Bobby was originally from New Jersey.
Speaker 1: Things in Louisiana moved a little slower than in New Jersey,
Speaker 1: and Bobby was okay with that, But sitting still just
Speaker 1: wasn't in his DNA.
Speaker 2: Bobby always worked. He likes working. He likes being told
Speaker 2: what to do. He was a little guy that did
Speaker 2: his job and kept out of the way.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty four, the soft spoken Bobby Cumber was
Speaker 1: forty six years old. He stood five feet eight inches
Speaker 1: tall and barely weighed one hundred and fifty pounds. Soaking wet.
Speaker 1: He and his wife, Mara lived in a modest, one
Speaker 1: story home with their daughter and two dogs.
Speaker 2: They were both quiet people. They didn't drink, they bowled,
Speaker 2: They liked going on drives in the country. They lived
Speaker 2: a very quiet life.
Speaker 1: That simple and modest life fit Bobby like a glove.
Speaker 2: He was the sweetest little guy, humble, accommodating, and gullible,
Speaker 2: with terrible luck.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about Bobby's luck. Growing up, he dreamed
Speaker 1: of being a sailor, so at age seventeen, he dropped
Speaker 1: out of high school and went to enlist with the Navy.
Speaker 2: Well, he went into the wrong door at the recruiting
Speaker 2: station and ended up with the Air Force instead. He
Speaker 2: ended up serving twenty years in the Air Force when
Speaker 2: what he really wanted to do was be in the Navy.
Speaker 2: That's Bobby. Anyone else probably would faunt that, but Bobby didn't,
Speaker 2: because Bobby doesn't fight.
Speaker 1: Not only did he have a twenty one year career
Speaker 1: in the Air Force, he also fought in the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: Then there was his wedding to Myra.
Speaker 2: They got married Brida in the thirteenth They went to
Speaker 2: Dallas for their honeymoon for three days in a brain
Speaker 2: the entire three.
Speaker 1: Days after their wedding, Bobby adopted Myra's daughter, Becky.
Speaker 2: She didn't know that she'd been adopted. She thought it
Speaker 2: was her birth father, and she found out in the newspaper.
Speaker 1: That newspaper article ran during Bobby's trial in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 1: We'll circle back to that trial in a bit. So
Speaker 1: back in the spring of nineteen eighty four, you could
Speaker 1: say Bobby's simple and quiet life in Louisiana had gotten
Speaker 1: a little too quiet.
Speaker 2: His wife was paying attention to their daughter because she
Speaker 2: was having trouble in school, so he felt a little neglected,
Speaker 2: and he came back to New Jersey.
Speaker 1: Bobby was the oldest of seven and returned to his
Speaker 1: hometown of perth Amboid, New Jersey to visit one of
Speaker 1: his brothers.
Speaker 2: And he ran into his high school girlfriend who invited
Speaker 2: him to her daughter's graduation in Tom's River. Bobby was flattered,
Speaker 2: so of course he went. He always did. The city
Speaker 2: we do.
Speaker 1: Tom's River is an upper middle class suburb along the
Speaker 1: Jersey Shore, and that party was filled with the who's
Speaker 1: who of Tom's River. As luck would have it, Bobby
Speaker 1: wound up sitting next to Robert and Maria Marshall, Yes,
Speaker 1: the same couple we talked about in the previous two episodes.
Speaker 2: Robert Marshall sold insurance and iras and did very well.
Speaker 2: He was an attractive man with a very attractive wife
Speaker 2: and three teenage sons who were all championship swimmers, and
Speaker 2: she was swim team mom of the Year.
Speaker 1: Robert and Maria Marshall were at that party because they
Speaker 1: lived next door to Bobby's ex girlfriend, and Robert Marshall
Speaker 1: struck up a conversation with Bobby.
Speaker 2: And he was very flattered that a big shot in
Speaker 2: his mind like Robert Marsha would pay attention to him
Speaker 2: at all.
Speaker 1: That night, the smooth talking Robert Marshall did what he
Speaker 1: did best.
Speaker 2: Marshall first tried to Solomon Ira, because that was Robert Marshall,
Speaker 2: and then Marshall asked Bobby if he could find him
Speaker 2: a private detective.
Speaker 1: Robert Marshall said he needed someone to investigate some of
Speaker 1: his missing gambling winnings, and since people in Tom's River talked,
Speaker 1: he wanted to hire an out of town PI.
Speaker 2: It never did make any sense because if you wanted
Speaker 2: to go out of town, there's certainly private detectives in
Speaker 2: New York and Philadelphia. You don't have to go to
Speaker 2: Louisiana to get a detective.
Speaker 1: Not to mention, Bobby was a clerk and bookkeeper at
Speaker 1: a hardware store. He didn't have those kind of connections.
Speaker 2: But Bobby being Bobby, never questioned it. Somebody asked him
Speaker 2: for a favor, so he said he would look around
Speaker 2: and ask around down in Shreveport, Louisiana, where he was
Speaker 2: working at the time.
Speaker 1: A few days later, Bobby put Robert Marshall in touch
Speaker 1: with a regular at the hardware store, a former cop
Speaker 1: turned private detective named Billy Wayne McKinnon. The strange thing is,
Speaker 1: even after Bobby connected the two, Robert Marshall kept calling.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Robert Marshall would try to sell Bobby and Ira.
Speaker 1: Other calls were simply messages he wanted Bobby to pass
Speaker 1: to the private detective Billy Way McKinnon.
Speaker 2: They used him's message shop, tell so and so to
Speaker 2: call me. Tell McKinnon to call me.
Speaker 1: Over the summer of nineteen eighty four, Robert Marshall made
Speaker 1: thirty one calls to Bobby Cumber. It got to the
Speaker 1: point where Bobby politely told Robert to call Billy Way
Speaker 1: McKinnon directly, but the calls continued until the day before
Speaker 1: Maria Marshall's murder. That was the last time Robert Marshall
Speaker 1: called Bobby Cumber.
Speaker 2: Marshall made phone calls on his office phone to Bobby Cumber,
Speaker 2: and within two weeks of the murder, the police sound
Speaker 2: phone calls immediately.
Speaker 1: Maria Marshall was murdered in early September of nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: When the police went through her husband's phone records, they
Speaker 1: found his calls to Bobby Cumber.
Speaker 2: Bobby was arrested and held for forty eight hours without charges,
Speaker 2: without food, and without any kind of video or audio recording.
Speaker 2: While the police hammered him, they were sure that he
Speaker 2: had something to do with it, but Bobby didn't.
Speaker 1: What Bobby didn't know was that Robert Marshall, the popular
Speaker 1: guy he met at a party a couple months earlier,
Speaker 1: had been living a double life.
Speaker 2: Robert Marshall he had a gambling problem, He had a
Speaker 2: girlfriend and he wanted out, and he had just in
Speaker 2: the months before the murder up to his wife's life
Speaker 2: insurance to a million and a half. Marshall was in
Speaker 2: debt and he wanted his wife to pay for it
Speaker 2: with her life.
Speaker 1: And that's what Robert Marshall did. He may have said
Speaker 1: he was looking for an out of state private detective,
Speaker 1: but what he was really looking for was someone to
Speaker 1: kill his wife, Maria. And when the police learned Bobby
Speaker 1: Comber connected Robert Marshall to Billy Waing McKinnon, they believed Bobby,
Speaker 1: at the very least knew something about the murder plot,
Speaker 1: but he.
Speaker 2: Had no idea really what was going on.
Speaker 1: Bobby told the police all he had done was write
Speaker 1: down simple phone messages from Robert Marshall and passed them
Speaker 1: on to Billy Wing McKinnon. The police didn't believe him
Speaker 1: and charged him with conspiracy to commit murder. I'm not
Speaker 1: guilty of this crime. I just want to go back
Speaker 1: to losing and lived out the rest of my life,
Speaker 1: put my family. That was the voice of Bobby Cumber,
Speaker 1: who sat in a New Jersey jail awaiting his trial.
Speaker 1: After three hundred days, he finally caught a break when
Speaker 1: Judge Manuel Greenberg reviewed his case and.
Speaker 2: I conclude there's nothing in the grand jury transcript to
Speaker 2: indicate that the Cumber knew there was going to be
Speaker 2: a murder.
Speaker 1: So Judge Greenberg dismissed the charges and let Bobby return
Speaker 1: home a freeman.
Speaker 2: On the suggestion of his attorney at the time, Bobby
Speaker 2: filed a thirty million dollar wrongful of rest suit against
Speaker 2: the state of New Jersey.
Speaker 1: Along with false imprisonment. Bobby sued for mental abuse and
Speaker 1: some physical problems he developed while in jail.
Speaker 2: He also thought somebody should pay his wages at the
Speaker 2: hardware store for the year he was in jail before
Speaker 2: his trial.
Speaker 1: And if you had us for inflation, Bobby's thirty million
Speaker 1: dollar lawsuit from nineteen eighty five would be around eighty
Speaker 1: seven million dollars today.
Speaker 2: He admitted, Okay, maybe he got a little greedy, but
Speaker 2: he didn't take the thirty million his lawyer did.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty five, Bobby's lawyer told the Shreveport Journal,
Speaker 1: the important thing here is that the justice system works,
Speaker 1: and by the end of nineteen eighty five, Bobby's lawyer
Speaker 1: would eat those words. After Judge Greenberg dismissed the charges
Speaker 1: against Bobby, the Ocean County prosecutors appealed that decision, and
Speaker 1: that's when Bobby's bad luck reared its ugly head again.
Speaker 2: The State Supreme Court ram stated to charges.
Speaker 1: Think about that. You're arrested for a crime you didn't commit.
Speaker 1: A judge then throws out the charges, and then another
Speaker 1: judge puts them back on. Even the prosecutor seemed surprised
Speaker 1: by the court's decision.
Speaker 2: They knew their case was very weak. So the assistant
Speaker 2: prosecutor offered Bobby a deal. If he would plead to
Speaker 2: conspiracy to commit insurance fraud, he could go home with
Speaker 2: time served and he would be done with it.
Speaker 1: On paper, it was a simple deal, but there was
Speaker 1: one big catch.
Speaker 2: If Bobby did that, the thirty million dollars wrongful of
Speaker 2: rest suit goes away.
Speaker 1: It seems like bringing back these charges was a retaliation
Speaker 1: from the state against Bobby's lawsuit. I can't help but
Speaker 1: to wonder what would have happened if his lawyer wasn't
Speaker 1: so greedy and he had asked for less money. Either way,
Speaker 1: Bobby wasn't about to admit to doing something he didn't do.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm not guilty, and my attorney said, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll go to trial.
Speaker 2: Nobody can believe he did that. It was terrible advice,
Speaker 2: and his lawyer is famous among New Jersey lawyers for
Speaker 2: that advice.
Speaker 1: As Judy wrote in one of her articles, Bobby was
Speaker 1: naive to the point of lunacy, and his string of
Speaker 1: bad luck was far from over. Bobby Cumber had a choice.
Speaker 1: He could plead guilty to conspiracy to commit insurance fraud
Speaker 1: and get released from jail, or he could take his
Speaker 1: chances in the courtroom.
Speaker 2: His lawyer told him, if you think you're innocent, I
Speaker 2: think we should go for it.
Speaker 1: Journalist Judy Pete wrote about Bobby Cumber, who went for
Speaker 1: it and took his case to court. His trial featured
Speaker 1: the same judge who initially threw out the charges against Bobby.
Speaker 1: You can't help but to feel optimistic about that.
Speaker 2: By the time that Bobby went to court, everybody was
Speaker 2: sick to death as the story.
Speaker 1: It was the summer of nineteen eighty six, and the
Speaker 1: story of Maria Marshall had been from page news for
Speaker 1: nearly two years. By then, Maria's husband, Robert Marshall, had
Speaker 1: been convicted of hiring a hitman to kill her. But
Speaker 1: here's the thing. Both Robert Marshall and one of the
Speaker 1: guys he hired to kill Maria backed up Bobby's story.
Speaker 2: Marshall always said that Bobby knew nothing, But Marshall did
Speaker 2: not testify on Bobby's trial because he was a convicted
Speaker 2: murderer on death row, not exactly a star witness.
Speaker 1: But the jury did hear from Billy Way McKinnon. He
Speaker 1: was the guy Robert Marshall originally hired to kill his wife.
Speaker 2: Billy Wayne McKinnon was insisting that Bobby knew nothing about
Speaker 2: the whole plot. He said specifically that he didn't tell
Speaker 2: Bobby because he didn't want to share the money with him.
Speaker 1: Robert Marshall paid Billy Wayne tens of thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: to kill Maria Marshall, and he wanted that money for himself.
Speaker 1: But the prosecution put a new Jersey State detective on
Speaker 1: the stand whose testimony hurt Bobby.
Speaker 2: They said he confessed, but he didn't know what he
Speaker 2: was confessing to. He thought he was confessing to insurance fraud.
Speaker 2: And they never let him have a lawyer, of course,
Speaker 2: because when she charged somebody, they have to have a lawyer.
Speaker 2: But you don't have to give him a lawyer until
Speaker 2: they're charged. This was the basis primarily of why the
Speaker 2: judge originally threw out the charges against him. They had
Speaker 2: no motive, they had no opportunity, they had no money trail.
Speaker 2: They really had nothing. They only had those phone calls.
Speaker 1: Those phone calls between Robert Marshall and Bobby Cumber were important.
Speaker 2: There were thirty one calls. They were all short phone calls.
Speaker 1: The defense didn't dispute these calls, but they argued most
Speaker 1: of them lasted a few seconds.
Speaker 2: The problem with the telephone calls was that back in
Speaker 2: that time, in nineteen eighty four, the phone company did
Speaker 2: not keep track of the timing below a minute, So
Speaker 2: any call that was either five seconds or ten seconds
Speaker 2: or fifty nine seconds still registered as a minute, so
Speaker 2: they had no way to say, well, the total conversation
Speaker 2: was tell so and so to call me. They had
Speaker 2: no proof of that.
Speaker 1: During closing arguments, the prosecutor told the jury Bobby had
Speaker 1: to have known something about the murder plot. He said,
Speaker 1: nobody is that stupid. And listen to what Bobby's defense
Speaker 1: layer said. In response, He stood before the jury, pointed
Speaker 1: towards his client and said he was a simple, silly, foolish,
Speaker 1: and limited piece of flesh who will never amount anything
Speaker 1: more than a hardware store clerk.
Speaker 2: Ultimately, it came down to the jury was asked to
Speaker 2: believe that Bobby was that goable. New Jersey's a fairly
Speaker 2: cynical state, and they just didn't believe it. They couldn't
Speaker 2: believe he didn't know anything, so they convicted him as
Speaker 2: an accessory to conspiracy to commit murder.
Speaker 1: That left the wide eyed a naive hardware clerk from
Speaker 1: Louisiana stunned, and Bobby's lawyer absolutely lost it.
Speaker 2: His lawyer just fell apart and then burst into tears.
Speaker 2: He couldn't believe it. It destroyed his reputation, it destroyed him practically.
Speaker 2: He realized he had made a horrible mistake, but really
Speaker 2: didn't have the wherewithal to fix it.
Speaker 1: Judge Greenberg, the same judge who a year earlier had
Speaker 1: dismissed the charges against Bobby, now had to pose a
Speaker 1: sentence on him.
Speaker 2: I gave mister cumber and the minimum sentence that you
Speaker 2: could give, which was thirty years.
Speaker 1: You can hear the heartache in Judge Greenberg's voice thirty years,
Speaker 1: but keep in mind his hands were tied.
Speaker 2: The thing is that the year before, New Jersey had
Speaker 2: passed a mandatory minimum sentencing law that said an accessory
Speaker 2: to any major crime would have to serve the same
Speaker 2: sentence as the players, whether they had actually committed the
Speaker 2: crime or not. So Bobby, who had never really done anything,
Speaker 2: hadn't even jaywalked, was convicted and sentenced to the maximum,
Speaker 2: which was thirty years in prison without the possibility of.
Speaker 1: Prole Bobby did the math and figured out his release
Speaker 1: state would be in twenty fifteen. He'd be released on
Speaker 1: the same day of his wedding Innsary.
Speaker 2: Bobby just went to prison. He ran out of appeals
Speaker 2: after about fourteen fifteen years, and by the time I
Speaker 2: entered the whole story, that's where Bobby was.
Speaker 1: Judy learned of Bobby's story during a meeting with Judge Greenberg,
Speaker 1: the man who sentenced Bobby.
Speaker 2: He actually said, you know, there's one case that always
Speaker 2: bothered me, Bobby Cumbers case. He absolutely believed that Bobby
Speaker 2: shouldn't have spent a day in jail or in prison.
Speaker 2: It sort of stunned me because sitting judges under New
Speaker 2: Jersey law are not allowed to discuss any case they'd had. However,
Speaker 2: he was on the border of retirement, and I think
Speaker 2: that he had always felt bad about it. So I
Speaker 2: went back and I looked it up, and I realized
Speaker 2: horrible injustice had been done to Bobby and just about
Speaker 2: everybody involved in the case. I agreed.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety nine, Judy made her first visit to
Speaker 1: New Jersey State Prison in trent where Bobby was held.
Speaker 2: Trenton State was New Jersey's worst prison. Its most dangerous
Speaker 2: criminals were housed in trend.
Speaker 1: She describes her meeting like something you'd see on TV.
Speaker 1: A small booth divided by thick glass with a phone
Speaker 1: on each side. When Bobby shuffled in, his hair was gray.
Speaker 1: He was blind in his right eye after a botched
Speaker 1: eye surgery, and he had heart problems. Just walking up
Speaker 1: a flight of stairs gave him chest pains, but none
Speaker 1: of that seemed to bother him.
Speaker 2: He smiled and said, it's nice to see you. I've
Speaker 2: been waiting to tell somebody my.
Speaker 1: Story, and that's what Bobby did. He shared everything from
Speaker 1: the party where he met the marshals to his thirty
Speaker 1: million dollars wrongful of rest lawsuit, to his trial and
Speaker 1: unlikely conviction.
Speaker 2: He told me how hard it was on his family.
Speaker 2: A lost their house, they lost their jobs, they lost everything.
Speaker 2: Myra his wife, she got death threats. No one would
Speaker 2: hire her. The only reason they even survived during that
Speaker 2: period was that Bobby had a pension from the Air Force.
Speaker 2: The only money they had besides the pension was his
Speaker 2: daughter Becky, clean toilets and the local library. That whole
Speaker 2: family is the collateral damage of Bobby.
Speaker 1: Even Bobby's siblings in New Jersey refused to.
Speaker 2: See him ever since he was convicted. His entire family
Speaker 2: in the New Jersey side, who were close enough to visit,
Speaker 2: disowned him. No one would write to him or visit him.
Speaker 1: Bobby's wife and daughter back in Louisiana, where all he
Speaker 1: had left. If you remember, Bobby adopted Becky, and that
Speaker 1: was something Becky had to learn from a newspaper article.
Speaker 1: During Bobby's trial.
Speaker 2: His daughter was bullied in school. She was thrown off
Speaker 2: of cheerleading because she was related to a degenerate. Is
Speaker 2: what everybody told her.
Speaker 1: Every Sunday, Bobby talked with Myra and Becky on the phone,
Speaker 1: but they had never been to see him.
Speaker 2: Now, Bobby would not allow them to visit him in prison.
Speaker 2: He didn't want them to see him locked up, so
Speaker 2: instead they wrote letters, more than two thousand letters.
Speaker 1: In her letters, Myra tried to stay positive, but of
Speaker 1: course it wasn't easy.
Speaker 2: There were daves, it was hard to breathe, it was
Speaker 2: so awful, but she never considered divorcing him because he
Speaker 2: was her husband and her marriage vow said for better
Speaker 2: or worse, and she figured, hopefully this was the worst
Speaker 2: it was going to get. One of the things that
Speaker 2: Myra said was she wasn't hopeless, but she was helpless.
Speaker 2: There was nothing she could do about this. Even though
Speaker 2: she knew it was wrong, there was nothing she could do.
Speaker 1: Bobby's new lawyers tried everything to get him released, but
Speaker 1: they all got denied.
Speaker 2: Here we have a pathologically nice guy with terrible luck,
Speaker 2: which again has sort of dogged him his entire life.
Speaker 2: And this guy ends up spending the bulk of his
Speaker 2: adult life in the worst prison in one of the
Speaker 2: worst states in the country. And it was so obvious
Speaker 2: the injustice and important people like the judge, even the
Speaker 2: prosecutors at a certain point no longer fought letting Bobby
Speaker 2: out of jail, but nobody would go that extra distance
Speaker 2: to fix it. That broke my heart.
Speaker 1: Judy's first article about Bobby, titled Flawed Judgment, ran in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 2: I got into journalism to help people. I thought that
Speaker 2: if you gave people the facts that you would actually
Speaker 2: right wrongs that didn't happen very much my career maybe
Speaker 2: three times that I can remember, and Bobby was the one.
Speaker 2: I don't say we were friends, but I felt very
Speaker 2: protective of Bobby.
Speaker 1: Along with writing a handful of articles, Judy teamed up
Speaker 1: with Judge Greenberg in hopes of drumming up support for
Speaker 1: Bobby's release.
Speaker 2: The Judge and I talked to a couple of sixth
Speaker 2: grade classes and we told him about Bobby, and they
Speaker 2: were outraged and started a letter writing campaign. To the governor,
Speaker 2: and these are twelve year olds. You know, as adults,
Speaker 2: we are just too jaded to appreciate the world's Bobby Combers. Luckily,
Speaker 2: there's still kids out there who can appreciate.
Speaker 1: That those letters the kids wrote to New Jersey's governor
Speaker 1: were done for a reason.
Speaker 2: The only chance that he had then was to have
Speaker 2: the governor of New Jersey commune descents.
Speaker 1: A handful of New Jersey governors came and left office,
Speaker 1: but no one would help Bobby until two thousand and six.
Speaker 2: At that time, the head of the Senate, the state
Speaker 2: Senate took over as acting governor, a guy by the
Speaker 2: name of Cody.
Speaker 1: On his very last day as acting governor, Richard Cody
Speaker 1: took action.
Speaker 2: He's the one who finally signed the clembency petition and
Speaker 2: made it very clear that justice was never served in
Speaker 2: Bobby Cumber's case and ordered the state to get him
Speaker 2: out of prison.
Speaker 1: Governor Cody told reporters, it's about time we did the
Speaker 1: right thing and let the poor guy go. So the
Speaker 1: governor called Bobby's wife to share the good news, but
Speaker 1: she didn't answer. She had a dentist appointment that day.
Speaker 1: Of course, she did a few days later, Bobby was
Speaker 1: on a plane headed home. Nearly twenty years after a
Speaker 1: jury convicted Bobby Cumber for conspiracy to commit murder, acting
Speaker 1: New Jersey Governor Richard Cody granted Bobby clemency in two
Speaker 1: thousand and six. Bobby's long fight for justice was finally over.
Speaker 1: Journalist Judy Pete was with Bobby after his release from prison.
Speaker 2: Frankly, I don't think there are very many cases like
Speaker 2: Bobby Kember. Bobby was the very first person under the
Speaker 2: law to be sentenced to the Managa to amitten him
Speaker 2: them as an accomplice.
Speaker 1: By then, Bobby had served nearly twenty years of his
Speaker 1: mandatory thirty year sentence.
Speaker 2: I just wanted this poor little schmoe to go home.
Speaker 2: That's all I ever wanted.
Speaker 1: Well, Bobby sat in prison. A book and even a
Speaker 1: mini series had been made about Maria Marshall's murder. Neither
Speaker 1: of them mentioned Bobby by name. Even the prison guards
Speaker 1: didn't know what Bobby was in for.
Speaker 2: Nobody really paid attention to him. He was just the
Speaker 2: other guy, a little squirt.
Speaker 1: Judy was with Bobby on his plane ride home from
Speaker 1: prison to Louisiana. Bobby was now sixty eight years old,
Speaker 1: and in those twenty years the world had changed.
Speaker 2: He couldn't believe how much coffee costs six dollars a cup.
Speaker 2: It was thirty five cents a cup when he went
Speaker 2: to prison. Or cell phones, the whole concept of cell phones.
Speaker 1: Judy described Bobby like a kid on Christmas morning.
Speaker 2: He was excited. He had a brown paper bag in
Speaker 2: his lap. That was all his possessions. What few letters
Speaker 2: he could have said, were in that little brown paper bag.
Speaker 1: Those letters from his wife Mara were all Bobby had
Speaker 1: from the last twenty years. Everything else He had lost.
Speaker 2: His hair, color, his sight, his dog's, his house, his help.
Speaker 2: I said, you know who do you blame? And he said,
Speaker 2: who is there to blame? That was the one that
Speaker 2: really struck me. Bobby just an assigned blame. We never did.
Speaker 1: Bobby didn't even blame his lawyer, who, by the way,
Speaker 1: stopped practicing criminal law after Bobby's trial.
Speaker 2: That was the last criminal case that he handled. He
Speaker 2: gave up criminal law after that and became an estate lawyer.
Speaker 1: His lawyer told Judy he regretted not pressuring Bobby into
Speaker 1: taking the original plea deal prosecutors offered. He also admitted
Speaker 1: that Bobby's case seemed like a sure thing.
Speaker 2: He thought he'd caught the case of the lifetime.
Speaker 1: When Bobby's flight landed in Shreveport, he grabbed his paper
Speaker 1: bag filled with Myra's letters and headed for the exit
Speaker 1: to meet her. Remember, they had not seen each other
Speaker 1: in twenty years. They're about to be reunited.
Speaker 2: He was extremely happy and also sad because now was
Speaker 2: the time as far as he was concerned, to put
Speaker 2: his family's life back together.
Speaker 1: Bobby held onto the railing from the jet bridge to
Speaker 1: the gate. Well, Judy followed behind.
Speaker 2: So he get to the end, and I thought he
Speaker 2: was going to cry.
Speaker 1: And at the gate, Bobby didn't see Myra or his
Speaker 1: daughter Becky waiting.
Speaker 2: For him, and he said, they should be here. Where
Speaker 2: are they? And he didn't realize nine to eleven had
Speaker 2: happened while he was in prison. They don't allow people
Speaker 2: to come to the gates anymore. When I explained that
Speaker 2: to him, he said, of course, there are a lot
Speaker 2: of things I'm going to have to learn. I can
Speaker 2: do that. I'm a patient man.
Speaker 1: The last time Myra and Becky had seen Bobby was
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty six, when he was being led out
Speaker 1: of the courtroom in handcuffs.
Speaker 2: When he finally did meet them, they just ugged and cried.
Speaker 2: Bobby had trouble stopping crying. He cried through most of
Speaker 2: the day.
Speaker 1: Judy rode with Bobby, Myra, and Becky to Bobby's new home.
Speaker 1: Myra had to sell their old house to pay for
Speaker 1: Bobby's legal bills.
Speaker 2: I would go into the kitchen periodically and one of
Speaker 2: them would follow me in, usually bursting into tears and
Speaker 2: telling me how bad it had been and how bad
Speaker 2: they felt for Bobby.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of new things.
Speaker 2: He saw his grandson for the very first time. Becky
Speaker 2: got married and had a child that she named after Bobby.
Speaker 2: It just rounded out everything well.
Speaker 1: Bobby was in prison, his wife and daughter had gone
Speaker 1: to college and become social workers. Maybe it was a coincidence,
Speaker 1: or maybe it was their way of learning how to
Speaker 1: process their feelings.
Speaker 2: Bobby sat at the table and kind of gave a
Speaker 2: speech of it's my job to draw this out of you.
Speaker 2: I need to help make you the best I can.
Speaker 2: You're my family, and I love you. That was it.
Speaker 2: Then we went to dinner, and they didn't want to
Speaker 2: talk about it at dinner because they were in a
Speaker 2: crowded place, and they still the habit of hiding who
Speaker 2: Bobby was from the rest of the world that Myra
Speaker 2: and Becky lived in. It was just ingrained in them.
Speaker 2: You know. They didn't know how people would handle it
Speaker 2: that Bobby was an ex conduct.
Speaker 1: And as the years passed, Judy continued to hear from
Speaker 1: Bobby and his family.
Speaker 2: You know, I think I got some Christmas cards from them,
Speaker 2: but I thought it was time for me to bow
Speaker 2: out of Bobby.
Speaker 1: And the Combers must have felt the same way, because
Speaker 1: those cards eventually stopped coming.
Speaker 2: It was time for them to move on with their life,
Speaker 2: and I was the reminder of what.
Speaker 1: Was After being released from prison, Bobby Cumber lived another
Speaker 1: fifteen years until he passed away in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: Bobby Cumber was eighty three years old. Bobby's obituary was short,
Speaker 1: sweet and simple. It said he enjoyed bowling and caring
Speaker 1: for his dogs. My team did reach out to Bobby's
Speaker 1: wife and daughter, even his attorney, but we never heard back.
Speaker 1: In speaking with Judy, Bobby was special and loved by many.
Speaker 1: He lived his life in service to others, and.
Speaker 2: He did everything everybody told him to. You know, he
Speaker 2: joined the wrong military. He served in Vietnam and Saigon
Speaker 2: during the Fall of Saigon.
Speaker 1: Bobby Cumber served his country and it did not serve him.
Speaker 2: Bobby is a very important footnote in judicial history as
Speaker 2: one of the most unlikely prosecutions that anyone had ever seen.
Speaker 1: Next Time on American Homicide, a woman found murdered in
Speaker 1: her home leads investigator to her alleged stalker, a married cop.
Speaker 1: But there's so much more to this story. I'm Sloane Glass.
Speaker 1: We'll head to Louisiana for the story of Janor Gillery.
Speaker 1: That's next time on American Homicide. You can contact the
Speaker 1: American Homicide team by emailing us at American Homicide Pod
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. That's American Homicide Pod at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. American Homicide is hosted and written by me
Speaker 1: Sloane Glass and is a production of Glass Podcasts, a
Speaker 1: division of Glass Entertainment Group, in partnership with iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: The show is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Todd Gans.
Speaker 1: The series is also written and produced by Todd Gants,
Speaker 1: with additional writing by Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunning. Our
Speaker 1: associate producer is Kristin Melcurie. Our iHeart team is Ali
Speaker 1: Perry and Jessica Crimecheck. Audio editing, mixing, and mastering by
Speaker 1: Nico Ruka. American Homicides theme song was composed by Oliver
Speaker 1: Bains of Neiser Music Library provided by My Music. Follow
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