Speaker 1: On his eighth birthday in nineteen ninety eight. Little Robbie
Speaker 1: was excited as he disappeared into a network of trails
Speaker 1: in the woods behind his Texas neighborhood to go invite
Speaker 1: a friend to a backyard camp out. Then less than
Speaker 1: an hour later, he came stumbling back out, blackened and
Speaker 1: burned over nearly his entire body after being doused in
Speaker 1: gasoline and set on fire. Doctors never expected him to survive,
Speaker 1: yet Robbie defied the odds and spent the next thirteen
Speaker 1: years enduring hundreds of surgeries while investigators struggled to prove
Speaker 1: who had done this to him. What followed became one
Speaker 1: of the most disturbing and emotionally devastating criminal cases Texas
Speaker 1: has ever seen, and eventually, through sheer determination, Robbie made
Speaker 1: sure that the one who did this to him was
Speaker 1: held accountable in the end. This is the story of
Speaker 1: eight year old Robbie Middleton.
Speaker 2: My name's Ben, I'm Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked
Speaker 2: and Grim, a true crime podcast.
Speaker 1: Following material more audience listener discretion, Nicole has some big news,
Speaker 1: like massive news. I do she took two days off.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, I did a little bit of work today.
Speaker 2: We are workaholics, but maybe like an hour total.
Speaker 1: Well that that counts. We're workaholics. And yeah, the fact
Speaker 1: that you took time off is pretty big. Congratulations.
Speaker 2: It was so damn good for my mental health. You
Speaker 2: have no idea. But now I kind of it's like,
Speaker 2: I'm not really a middle person. I'm just like all
Speaker 2: or nothing. Yeah, and so now I'm like, okay, well,
Speaker 2: I just want to take the whole week off.
Speaker 1: You're just onto the nothing and of the train now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel that though, don't get me wrong, I feel
Speaker 1: that well.
Speaker 2: In our pre show, yeah, I said last year, I
Speaker 2: like needed only two hands to to say how many
Speaker 2: days off I took that year? And that's not okay,
Speaker 2: that's not so.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you're actually looking after that a bit
Speaker 1: more this year.
Speaker 2: It's a goal.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think I said that in the pre show too,
Speaker 1: that I think it's important that we all try and
Speaker 1: take care of ourselves and you know, look after ourselves
Speaker 1: and appreciate things.
Speaker 2: So and enjoy your life a little.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. For example, I'm having a whiskey, you sure are,
Speaker 1: and you know if I'm having a whiskey on the show.
Speaker 1: That usually means that the episode is a heavy one.
Speaker 1: So actually just saying.
Speaker 2: There is a correlation, there isn't there there very much?
Speaker 2: So is dang? So why am I not drinking alcohol?
Speaker 1: I don't know. You made that choice, not me. You're
Speaker 1: just having a bubbly, aren't you?
Speaker 2: A cherry bubbly? Bubbies are amazing. They're delicious, especially when
Speaker 2: they're cold, because we don't keep them in the fridge
Speaker 2: very often.
Speaker 1: Well in a tiny home, we don't have much room
Speaker 1: in the fridge.
Speaker 2: But this one was in the fridge and I was like, yeah.
Speaker 1: Well did you throw more in the fridge? When you
Speaker 1: pull that out? It actually, well it's good. Okay, So
Speaker 1: you got some more more chilled bubblies for later to enjoy. Awesome.
Speaker 1: We also did do something fun the other day that
Speaker 1: we didn't even talk about in the pre show. We
Speaker 1: went to a poultry swap. Oh yeah, saw some chickens
Speaker 1: and stuff. Had a good time. We always go like,
Speaker 1: even if we're not getting chickens or anything, we just
Speaker 1: grab a coffee and go check it out under around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's always fun to go do those things.
Speaker 2: And we are we going to announce it or no,
Speaker 2: we can if you'd like. We rehomed our two rooms.
Speaker 1: We did. We had to downsize our flock a little bit,
Speaker 1: and for recording purposes, they were constantly interrupting our records.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a good fit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we found them a great home. We can
Speaker 1: actually go visit them whenever we want to.
Speaker 2: It was just, yeah, I got a little emotional almost.
Speaker 2: I was just so thrilled that we found them a
Speaker 2: good home to pass.
Speaker 1: Yeah. A nice start too.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: They got some other chickens and ducks and they had
Speaker 1: pigs and oh it was perfect. Yeah. And it's actually
Speaker 1: even like a rescue as well. So they taken a
Speaker 1: lot of animals who who need assistance, who need to
Speaker 1: find a home. So not only did they take in
Speaker 1: our roosters, we made sure you put a little bit
Speaker 1: of a contribution monetarily wise towards their rescue to help
Speaker 1: them out and make sure that our roosters get a
Speaker 1: good place.
Speaker 2: Couldn't have gone any better, I agree.
Speaker 1: I think there's one more thing too about it that
Speaker 1: couldn't go anymore better, and it's when you sign up
Speaker 1: for Patreon and get that exclusive behind the scenes content.
Speaker 1: You can go check out our pre show that we
Speaker 1: recorded right before this, like Live Lindsey, Lemon, Squeeze, and
Speaker 1: Kylie aunt All can because they signed up this week
Speaker 1: because they're just awesome like that and they're going to
Speaker 1: get all that cool behind scenes stuff and extra content.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we super appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Was that one too obvious?
Speaker 2: Well, no, I kind of set you up. I felt like,
Speaker 2: and I was wondering if you're gonna take it, But yeah,
Speaker 2: it was. I guess it was obvious.
Speaker 1: I kind of made that one obvious. I was hoping
Speaker 1: it was obvious.
Speaker 2: So that's okay. I think that still worked really well.
Speaker 1: I'm not I don't always try and hide them, but
Speaker 1: maybe I should start trying to hide them a bit
Speaker 1: more because there's been a couple of times you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: totally seen that coming.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, we at this point, I think we
Speaker 2: just will.
Speaker 1: You think probably, Oh now it's on.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it's a game.
Speaker 1: Now it's I'm going to make sure I try and
Speaker 1: hide this as best as I can and just bring
Speaker 1: it out of nowhere.
Speaker 2: Donkey kong.
Speaker 1: Oh it is. But anyways, I'm going to save that
Speaker 1: for maybe next Tuesday or maybe the next one after that.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to tell you when, but I think
Speaker 1: we should get to the actual case today. And heads up,
Speaker 1: this does deal with abuse of a child, so trigger
Speaker 1: warning for that. It is somewhat of a survival story.
Speaker 2: Okay, I know you have me been on the edge
Speaker 2: of my seat here. This one seems like it's gonna
Speaker 2: It's tough.
Speaker 1: It's tough, and it's sad. I'll tell you that right now.
Speaker 1: I mean, most cases are so, I mean, who am
Speaker 1: I to say, but this one definitely got to me.
Speaker 1: I'll say that. So in the morning of June twenty eighth,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight, Robbie Middleton woke up all excited. After all,
Speaker 1: it was his eighth birthday, and not to mention, school
Speaker 1: was out for the summer and the small town of
Speaker 1: Splendora was already warming under the East Texas sun. For
Speaker 1: most kids, birthdays mean cake and presents. For Robbie had
Speaker 1: also meant freedom. Summer had turned the wooded trails around
Speaker 1: his neighborhood into a giant playground, and that day he
Speaker 1: planned to spend much of his time outside as he could, basically,
Speaker 1: you know, enjoying the sun, enjoying the warmth enjoying the outdoors.
Speaker 1: Robert Middleton aka Robbie, lived with his family in a
Speaker 1: quiet rural area north of Houston. The neighborhoods around Splendora
Speaker 1: were separated by stretches of woods and dirt, trails and
Speaker 1: patches of undeveloped land, where local kids spent their afternoons
Speaker 1: riding bikes, exploring building forts, and cutting through the paths
Speaker 1: between their homes. Parents in the area were very used
Speaker 1: to children wandering from yard to yard. It was the
Speaker 1: quintessential place where kids disappeared outside for hours and came
Speaker 1: back when the street lights came on. By all accounts,
Speaker 1: Robbie was a sweet and unusually compassionate little boy. Friends
Speaker 1: and family described him as polite, energetic, and sensitive towards
Speaker 1: animals and other people. Even at a young age. He
Speaker 1: had a reputation for being very responsible, and he loved
Speaker 1: being outdoors and spending time with neighborhood friends. Now that Sunday,
Speaker 1: Robbie had plans. His family had bought him a new
Speaker 1: tent for his birthday, and he was excited about camping
Speaker 1: out in the backyard for the night. There were hot dogs, marshmallows,
Speaker 1: and birthday food waiting for that very evening, and at
Speaker 1: some point during the afternoon, Robbie planned to invite a
Speaker 1: neighborhood boy by the name of analvererto Padilla aka Beato,
Speaker 1: to spend the night camping with him in the backyard. Now,
Speaker 1: the Middletown family's home sat near a network of wooded trails,
Speaker 1: the ones I was talking about, the ones where children
Speaker 1: regularly used as shortcuts between neighborhoods and homes and all
Speaker 1: this sort of stuff. Robbie walked these paths countless times before.
Speaker 1: To him, they were so familiar, safe and normal. It
Speaker 1: was just like going through somewhere where he knew, just
Speaker 1: like the back of his own hand. And somewhere nearby
Speaker 1: in that same neighborhood lived another boy, Don Wilburn Collins.
Speaker 1: Don was older than Robbie by several years. He was
Speaker 1: born on April fourth, nineteen eighty five, and he was
Speaker 1: thirteen years old that summer. Over the years, neighbors would
Speaker 1: later describe Don as being aggressive and unpredictable, even violence.
Speaker 1: As just a child, he was like this, and kids
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood were said to fear him, and adults
Speaker 1: remembered him fighting carrying knives, hurting animals, and causing trouble
Speaker 1: around the community. But on June twenty eighth, nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: he was simply just another neighborhood teenager living near the
Speaker 1: wooded trails outside Splendora, and as the afternoon moved along,
Speaker 1: Robbie headed towards the woods on his way to go
Speaker 1: invite his friend to his birthday camp out. Now, at
Speaker 1: some point around late afternoon, Dawn also entered the same
Speaker 1: wooded paths between the neighborhoods. The trails there were quiet,
Speaker 1: the thick trees and brush surrounded the narrow dirt paths
Speaker 1: that cut through the area. Then less than an hour later,
Speaker 1: the entire neighborhood would erupt in panic. You see, sometime
Speaker 1: during that late afternoon, Robbie encountered thirteen ye old Don
Speaker 1: Collins in the woods, and what happened would become one
Speaker 1: of the most horrifying crimes the area had ever seen,
Speaker 1: because Dawn attacked Robbie. In that moment in the woods,
Speaker 1: eight year old Robbie was grabbed from behind and as
Speaker 1: he turned around, he had gasolene thrown in his face.
Speaker 1: From there, it was then poured all over his body
Speaker 1: as he was tied to a tree inside that wooded area,
Speaker 1: more gasolene was poured over his body, and then came
Speaker 1: the fire. The flames ignited all over him almost immediately,
Speaker 1: and soon with those flames engulfing Robbie as he was
Speaker 1: tied to the tree, the fishing line that was used
Speaker 1: to restrain him began to melt as the heat ate
Speaker 1: away at it and it let loose. Robbie now managed
Speaker 1: to break free from being bound to this tree and
Speaker 1: collapsed onto the ground, Still engulfed in flames. He began
Speaker 1: rolling the dirt, trying to distinguish the fire as the
Speaker 1: heat licked at his skin, burning him badly. Eventually, he
Speaker 1: forced himself back to his feet and stumbled down the
Speaker 1: trail towards the neighborhood, all while he was still set
Speaker 1: on fire. Now people nearby would later describe seeing smoke
Speaker 1: rising from the wooded path right before Robbie emerged. One
Speaker 1: witness saw what looked like a blackened figure stumbling from
Speaker 1: the trail, and another remembered hearing screamings before realizing that
Speaker 1: this blackened figure was a child. Now, Robbie ran as
Speaker 1: far as he could before collapsing near the sidewalk close
Speaker 1: to his home. Neighbors and witnesses rushed towards him. At first,
Speaker 1: some reportedly could not even recognize who they were looking at.
Speaker 1: Robbie's body had been burned so severely that much of
Speaker 1: his skin was black and melting away from his body.
Speaker 1: Witnesses described skin hanging from his fingers, the smell of
Speaker 1: gasoline still lingered around him. Smoke was even reportedly still
Speaker 1: rising from parts of his body when people reached him,
Speaker 1: clearly showing the flames had just been snuffed out moments
Speaker 1: before he stepped out into the open. One witness stayed
Speaker 1: with Robbie while another ran and called nine one one,
Speaker 1: and all the while, despite the unimaginable injuries and pain
Speaker 1: he was enduring, Robbie was still conscious. He begged for
Speaker 1: help and reportedly asked for water. Emergency responders soon raced
Speaker 1: to the scene, and when Robbie's father, Bobby Middleton arrived,
Speaker 1: he initially struggled to even comprehend what he was seeing
Speaker 1: before him was his son, and his body was just
Speaker 1: blackened from burns, with only the whites of his eyes
Speaker 1: allegedly clearly visible. So, needless to say, the injuries that
Speaker 1: he had sustained were clearly catastrophic. Robbie was rushed to
Speaker 1: the hospital and was in critical condition, and medical personnel
Speaker 1: quickly realized that this was not just a normal burn injury.
Speaker 1: Reports later placed the percentage of his body being burned
Speaker 1: between ninety nine percent to ninety nine point five percent
Speaker 1: of his body burned seriously, almost the entirety of his body.
Speaker 2: My gosh, this is just freaking horrible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, an absolute nightmare.
Speaker 2: Honestly, Oh my gosh. And to think that he was
Speaker 2: even able to get out of the woods, because the
Speaker 2: amount of pain that he was in, I feel like
Speaker 2: could quite easily just paralyze you as well.
Speaker 1: Oh for sure it could. Those flames and the smoke
Speaker 1: could probably blind him. The smoke inhalation would be burning
Speaker 1: his lungs, it would be hard to breathe. And the fact,
Speaker 1: like you said, that he was able to navigate out
Speaker 1: that loan's a miracle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, holy frick No, Like, no one would deserve something
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: No. Now, the damage caused Robbie was almost unimaginable as
Speaker 1: it covered virtually his entire body, and doctors began fighting
Speaker 1: immediately to try and stabilize him, but the situation. While
Speaker 1: it looked hopeless, many of the doctors said they had
Speaker 1: never seen burn victims this bad before. It was something
Speaker 1: that was basically out of a nightmare, even for these
Speaker 1: medical professionals. Now, for clarification, severe burn victims like Robbie
Speaker 1: often pass away, and not just from the burns themselves, though,
Speaker 1: but from shock, infection, fluid loss, organ failure, and respiratory complications.
Speaker 1: There is a whole library of things that go wrong
Speaker 1: with situations like this, and Robbie's body had endured trauma
Speaker 1: so extreme that the doctors and physicians reportedly warned his
Speaker 1: family that he was likely not going to survive, and
Speaker 1: at one point, doctors even prepared Robbie's mother, Colleen Middleton,
Speaker 1: for the possibility that her son would die within hours
Speaker 1: of arriving at the.
Speaker 2: Hospital on his damn birthday.
Speaker 1: On his eighth birthday. However, instead of dying, Robbie survived.
Speaker 1: After emergency stabilization, he was transferred to the burn unit
Speaker 1: at Shriner's Hospital for Children in Gavelston, Texas, where specialists
Speaker 1: began what would ultimately become years of painful treatment and reconstruction. However,
Speaker 1: this was still only the beginning, as the full context
Speaker 1: and extent of Robbie's injuries slowly became clear over the
Speaker 1: following days. You see, burns had destroyed massive portions of
Speaker 1: his skin. For example, he lost his eyelids. One eye,
Speaker 1: suffered severe permanent damage that would eventually leave him partially blind.
Speaker 1: Muscles tightened and contracted beneath scar tissue. His body struggled
Speaker 1: to regulate temperature, and even breathing became difficult because of
Speaker 1: how badly skin across his chest and torso had been damaged.
Speaker 1: So think of how when you take a deep breath
Speaker 1: in the expansion of your chest. Now imagine all that
Speaker 1: skin being burnt. Not only burnt, but trying to recover
Speaker 1: the sores, the rawness, the dryness, the cracking from simply
Speaker 1: inhaling and breathing.
Speaker 2: Oh geez.
Speaker 1: The injuries also created enormous risks of infection, and doctors
Speaker 1: use temporary cadaver skin to cover portions of Robbie's body
Speaker 1: while they searched for long term solutions. Now eventually, specialists
Speaker 1: attempted experimental procedures using lab grown skin created from surviving
Speaker 1: tissue taken from the bottom of Robbie's feet, which were
Speaker 1: one of the only areas of his body left relatively
Speaker 1: untouched by the fire. Even with those procedures, though, the
Speaker 1: recovery process was absolutely brutal, and the burn treatment is well,
Speaker 1: it's very excruciating. See dead tissue, for example, It has
Speaker 1: to be removed repeatedly to prevent that infection. So while
Speaker 1: you're healing, you have dead tissue being left behind, and
Speaker 1: that has to be scraped and cut away from your burns.
Speaker 1: As you try to heal, skin graphs will fail, medical
Speaker 1: dressings have to be constantly changed, and patients often undergo
Speaker 1: endless rounds of surgery just to preserve mobility and to
Speaker 1: try and keep wounds closed. Now, keep in mind Robbie
Speaker 1: endured all of this as a child, just a kid,
Speaker 1: and over the years he would ultimately undergo more than
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty surgeries, with some sources estimating the
Speaker 1: number being over two hundred procedures if smaller operations and
Speaker 1: revisions were included in that number. These treatments stretched across
Speaker 1: more than a decade of Robbie's life, and still in
Speaker 1: those first months after the attack, investigators still had no
Speaker 1: certainty that he wouldn't even live long enough to leave
Speaker 1: the hospital. The pain medication required to keep Robbi alive
Speaker 1: complicated things even further. He drifted in and out of
Speaker 1: consciousness while being very heavily medicated. Family members later described
Speaker 1: periods where Robbie was hallucinating or became very confused. At times,
Speaker 1: he reportedly blamed strange things for the fire that occurred,
Speaker 1: things like neighborhood dogs, accidental causes, and even completely unrelated people.
Speaker 1: And so investigators really struggled to determine which statements were reliable,
Speaker 1: in which ones were the product of trauma, medication and
Speaker 1: the excruciating physical pain. However, through it all, one thing
Speaker 1: kept resurfacing over and over, and that was the name
Speaker 1: Dawn Collins. So, now armed with this name and with
Speaker 1: Robbie fighting for his life in Gavelston, detectives in Montgomery
Speaker 1: County began trying to reconstruct what had happened in the
Speaker 1: woods outside of Splendora that day. At first, some investigators
Speaker 1: believe the fire might have actually been an accident. You know,
Speaker 1: children playing with gasoline or matches was not exactly unheard
Speaker 1: of in rural East Texas, especially when you consider that
Speaker 1: this is the nineties after all. But Robbie named Don
Speaker 1: Collins repeatedly and insisted on an intentional attack. Well that
Speaker 1: was very hard to ignore, so soon police arrested Down
Speaker 1: and took him into juvenile custody while investigators tried to
Speaker 1: build a case around what Robbie had described. But as
Speaker 1: the interviews continued, problems began appearing almost immediately. Wherever detectives looked,
Speaker 1: Robbie's condition was deteriorating constantly. The pain medications keeping him
Speaker 1: alive also affected his ability to communicate consistently, and according
Speaker 1: to later testimony, this is where Robbie's ups and downs
Speaker 1: of his condition played a very big part. Sometimes he
Speaker 1: appeared very lucid and focused, while other moments he hallucinated,
Speaker 1: he became confused, or gave contradictory sorry accounts of what
Speaker 1: had happened, and those inconsistencies would become one of the
Speaker 1: biggest obstacles in this story.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: At the same time, investigators were struggling with the physical
Speaker 1: evidence too. The wooded trail where Robbie had been attacked
Speaker 1: quickly became contaminated, and the chaos after the emergency responders
Speaker 1: and neighbors rushed through the area, detectives recovered numerous items
Speaker 1: from the woods, including cigarette butts, a lighter, fuel related
Speaker 1: materials like a plastic jug, hoses connected to a boat
Speaker 1: fuel tank, and burned clothing. But the scene had already
Speaker 1: been disturbed before investigators fully secured it. Not to mention,
Speaker 1: this was a public area where people were going through constantly,
Speaker 1: So what was part of the scene and what was
Speaker 1: part of what was left there before? Now, there was
Speaker 1: also another major problem too. None of the evidence that
Speaker 1: was there directly connected back to Don Collins at all.
Speaker 1: It did not connect him to the attack. There were
Speaker 1: also no eyewitnesses who saw him and tying Robbie to
Speaker 1: the tree. There was no DNA evidence that was linking
Speaker 1: him to the gasoline or the fire, and no fingerprints
Speaker 1: placing him at the scene in any sort of meaningful way.
Speaker 1: So investigators strongly suspected Don. But suspicion and proof, well
Speaker 1: those are two very different things, you know.
Speaker 2: I was so fixated on just Robbie, right, But the
Speaker 2: fact that a frickin thirteen year old committed this kind
Speaker 2: of crime is fucking mind blowing.
Speaker 1: Oh it is. And just wait till you hear about
Speaker 1: the motive behind that crime, because it gets even worse.
Speaker 2: Gosh, I don't know kids that young committing crimes like
Speaker 2: this terrifies me.
Speaker 1: It really does, which is where it begs that question
Speaker 1: of when does someone like become a monster like this
Speaker 1: right the nature verse nurture? Are they born that way
Speaker 1: or are they taught that way? I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: whole argument. We've been going on for years over the show,
Speaker 1: and it will continue going on for as long as
Speaker 1: the show exists. But someone this young being capable of
Speaker 1: something like that is scary, is shit?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems like it's more scary than if it
Speaker 2: was an adult really, which I don't know why exactly, but.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean an adult, it's like, how how long
Speaker 1: have you lived? How long can you be tainted? What
Speaker 1: sort of shit did you get into you? Like, you
Speaker 1: understand what you're after and what you should and shouldn't
Speaker 1: be doing, So it's like, okay, you're just a straight
Speaker 1: up piece of shit if you know you shouldn't do
Speaker 1: those things and you do it. But if you're that young,
Speaker 1: like what's going.
Speaker 2: On in your mind? Because a thirteen year old should
Speaker 2: still be just like riding their bikes or I don't know,
Speaker 2: what is a thirteen year old boy like playing in
Speaker 2: the woods.
Speaker 1: Yeah, looking for frogs and lizards and snakes, who knows.
Speaker 2: Not thinking about tying someone to a tree, pouring gasole
Speaker 2: over them and lighting them on fire.
Speaker 1: Right now, there was also a confession issue here, see,
Speaker 1: investigators believed Don had made incriminating statements while he was
Speaker 1: in custody, but questions soon emerged about how those statements
Speaker 1: had actually been obtained. Defense attorneys would later argue the
Speaker 1: juvenile interrogation process had not been handled correctly, so whatever
Speaker 1: evidence they did get while questioning Don was essentially moot,
Speaker 1: and concerns were raised about whether Don had been questioned
Speaker 1: even in an approved juvenile processing office, whether officers had
Speaker 1: improperly influenced portions of those statements, and whether his age
Speaker 1: and intellectual limitations made a confession even reliable or not so. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: after spending several months in a juvenile detention center, Don
Speaker 1: Collins was released, and for Robbie's family, who firmly believed
Speaker 1: he was the one responsible, it was devastating. But even still,
Speaker 1: the legal collapse mattered far less than the physical reality
Speaker 1: Robbie now faced every single day. While investigations stalled, the
Speaker 1: eight year old boy who should not have survived at
Speaker 1: all was beginning a recovery process that would consume the
Speaker 1: rest of his life. Because against almost every single expectation
Speaker 1: doctors originally had, Robbie Middleton continued to survive day after day,
Speaker 1: week after week, month after month. Robbie remained at Shriner's
Speaker 1: Hospital for Children in Galiston for extended periods while surgeons
Speaker 1: and specialists tried to rebuild what the fire had destroyed.
Speaker 1: The process was agonizing slow and never truly ended. As
Speaker 1: a severe burn, recovery became a permanent condition. I already
Speaker 1: alluded to all the surgeries Robbie would endure, and it
Speaker 1: was all so severe that nearly every stage of his
Speaker 1: childhood became tied to nothing but surgeries, rehabilitytion, wound care,
Speaker 1: and recovery. Doctors used every technique available to keep him alive,
Speaker 1: and those burns permanently changed nearly every part of him
Speaker 1: as he just kept surviving. This was his life for
Speaker 1: the next twelve years, surgery after surgery, skin grafts, reconstruction,
Speaker 1: wound revisions, eye procedures, therapy sessions. They were relentless, and
Speaker 1: so was the pain. Family members later described Robbie screaming
Speaker 1: through parts of his recovery as doctors cleaned wounds and
Speaker 1: changed dressings. Even routine physical therapy could become absolutely unbearable
Speaker 1: for him. Burn survivors often have to force scar tissue
Speaker 1: to stretch repeatedly to avoid losing mobility entirely. But people
Speaker 1: who worked with Robbie remembered something else just as much
Speaker 1: as they remembered the pain. They remembered his attitude. Rebecca Whitlock,
Speaker 1: a therapist who worked with Robbie at Shriner's, later described
Speaker 1: him as being funny, resilient, and unusually compassionate towards other patients.
Speaker 1: Staff Members watched him encourage younger burn victims, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that he himself had endured one of the worst
Speaker 1: injuries many of them had ever seen in their career,
Speaker 1: and over time, Robbie became more than just a patient
Speaker 1: at the hospital. He became part of the community there.
Speaker 1: He spent years around other burn victims and began developing
Speaker 1: a deep passion for helping them. Robbie reportedly struggled to
Speaker 1: understand why some children could not afford certain surgeries or
Speaker 1: treatments that they needed, so he started helping raise money
Speaker 1: for other burn victims and became an advocate for the
Speaker 1: hospital and the children inside of it. Even after everything
Speaker 1: that had happened to him, Robbie remained deeply empathetic to others.
Speaker 2: Wow, what a beautiful human I know.
Speaker 1: People close to him said he loved animals and hated
Speaker 1: seeing anything suffer. One story even recalled him crying after
Speaker 1: finding dead wildlife prior to all this because he could
Speaker 1: not stand the thought of animals being hurt, and he
Speaker 1: even reportedly wanted to work with rehabilitating injured animals one
Speaker 1: day now. Eventually, Robbie actually became well enough that he
Speaker 1: could return to school, but that transition was very difficult,
Speaker 1: to say the least at first, some children stared at
Speaker 1: him or made very cruel comments about his appearance. See
Speaker 1: the burns that Robbie was left with. While visible, scars
Speaker 1: covered almost his entire body, leaving him very scarred and disfigured,
Speaker 1: and after spending years in hospital and surgeries, re entering
Speaker 1: normal life wasn't easy, But over time classmates began seeing
Speaker 1: past those scars. Of his friends described Robbie as funny, determined,
Speaker 1: and surprisingly social considering everything that he had survived and
Speaker 1: the he was still actively going through. People who knew him,
Speaker 1: even said he rarely wanted sympathy. Instead, he just tried
Speaker 1: to move forward. He joked with nurses, He even flirted
Speaker 1: with some hospital staff. As he was getting older, he
Speaker 1: talked about driving someday. He participated in fundraising efforts, and
Speaker 1: at one point, after Hurricane Ike damaged the Gavelston Burne
Speaker 1: Hospital and its future became uncertain, Robbie reportedly helped hand
Speaker 1: out flyers advocating for the facility to reopen. He believed
Speaker 1: the hospital had saved his life and he wanted it
Speaker 1: to remain open for future burn victims to have a
Speaker 1: place to go, just like he did. Meanwhile, while Robbie
Speaker 1: spent his teenage years and during all these surgeries rehabilitation,
Speaker 1: Don Collins was living a very different life. After being
Speaker 1: released from juvenile detention in corrections with sort in connection
Speaker 1: with Robbie Middleton's burning, Don Collins returned to the community
Speaker 1: around Splendora. Legally he was free, but some investigators never
Speaker 1: stopped believing Don was actually fully responsible. However, without enough
Speaker 1: evidence to prosecute, the case slowly faded from public attention
Speaker 1: as the years passed.
Speaker 2: Imagine how much that just ate them up pay?
Speaker 1: I know right, not only the prosecutors, investigators or all
Speaker 1: these people working the actual case, but just the public
Speaker 1: and Robbie's family.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, this kid did it, But like, what
Speaker 2: can you do. He's just gonna continue being out and
Speaker 2: about living his life.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Then in two thousand and one, about three years
Speaker 1: after Robbie was burned, Don was involved in another situation.
Speaker 1: See he was accused of assaulting another eight year old boy,
Speaker 1: and according to testimony later introduced in court, Don threatened
Speaker 1: the child with a gun before sexually assaulting and raping
Speaker 1: him seriously. Now, the details of that assault remained very
Speaker 1: limited publicly because of the case moving through the juvene
Speaker 1: no system and the age of the individuals, so many
Speaker 1: of those records are sealed. But the conviction, however, became
Speaker 1: enormously important years later when prosecutors reopened Robbie's case. And
Speaker 1: one of the most disturbing details that emerged from that
Speaker 1: case much later was when the victim testified in court
Speaker 1: that Dawn threatened to burn him. Quote like he burned
Speaker 1: that little boy.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that is so disturbing.
Speaker 1: And he threatened that if he ever told anyone what had.
Speaker 2: Happened, such a little shit.
Speaker 1: I know, right, isn't that infuriating?
Speaker 2: Yeah? It just oh, it pisses you off so much
Speaker 2: when someone is so freaking evil and then they just
Speaker 2: are able to get out or aren't held to the
Speaker 2: consequences they should be, and then they do something terrible again.
Speaker 1: I know. It keeps going.
Speaker 2: Holy shit.
Speaker 1: Now. Don was ultimately convicted of the sexual assault in
Speaker 1: this case and was sent to Texas Youth Commission, where
Speaker 1: here remained until he was at the age of twenty one.
Speaker 1: The facility there emphasizes rehabilitation programs and counseling opportunities for
Speaker 1: juvenile offenders, and according to many accounts, Don showed very
Speaker 1: little interest in participating in any meanful way in any
Speaker 1: of those offerings of rehabilitation or any sort of programs.
Speaker 1: But either way, by the time he was released, he
Speaker 1: was now officially a registered sex offender, and the legal
Speaker 1: trouble for him didn't stop there either. Over the following years,
Speaker 1: Don was repeatedly accused of failing to comply with sex
Speaker 1: offender registration requirements. He even served additional time connected to
Speaker 1: failure to register charges and other criminal offenses, including theft
Speaker 1: related crimes, and most of all, he continued displaying violent
Speaker 1: and predatory behavior.
Speaker 2: So he just wasn't taken to any of this seriously. No.
Speaker 1: Witnesses even later described Don bragging about burning Robbie Middleton.
Speaker 2: Wow, disgusting.
Speaker 1: So they can't exactly prove it, and he's boasting about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he got away with it, so he's like, what
Speaker 2: else can I get away with?
Speaker 1: Now. Several former juvenile detainees that he was, you know,
Speaker 1: locked up with, later claimed Don openly talked about the
Speaker 1: attack while he was put away. Some even said he
Speaker 1: used the story to intimidate other younger boys, and one
Speaker 1: witness alleged Don described details of the crime while laughing
Speaker 1: about it openly.
Speaker 2: He almost seems proud of what he did, which is
Speaker 2: beyond like, how do you even comprehend that it's fucked
Speaker 2: because he would know, he would know, you know, Robbie
Speaker 2: was going through to some extent.
Speaker 1: But he doesn't give a shit. That's the kind of
Speaker 1: person this guy is. Ah, not a single fuck is
Speaker 1: given by him.
Speaker 2: The fact that someone like that is in this world
Speaker 2: is beyond.
Speaker 1: Me, I know. Now. Another witness, Don's cousin, Heather White,
Speaker 1: would later testify that Dawn even confessed to her shortly
Speaker 1: after the attack on Robbie even occurred. According to her account,
Speaker 1: Don described raping Robbie and then setting him on fire
Speaker 1: later because he feared Robbie was going to tell someone
Speaker 1: what he did. Oh boy, So if that is true,
Speaker 1: that is now two counts of sexually assaulting and raping
Speaker 1: a young boy. And then well one he did light
Speaker 1: him on fire, and the other he threatened with a
Speaker 1: gun and threatened he might light him on fire too.
Speaker 2: Holy shit, I'm just like so, I'm almost sweating. I'm
Speaker 2: so angry.
Speaker 1: I told you this is going to be a tough case.
Speaker 2: That is just so disgusting and such a piss off.
Speaker 2: It's just I don't know. I just feel a lot
Speaker 2: of rage in my body right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as you should. That's why I'm having this
Speaker 1: whiskey here, because trust me, I was not a happy
Speaker 1: person while I was researching and writing this case. I
Speaker 1: was getting kidding so livid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's unreal. Now.
Speaker 1: I do want to clarify though, these statements from like
Speaker 1: Don's cousin, Heather White and stuff and other former juvenile
Speaker 1: detainees and stuff, those statements only really existed as rumors
Speaker 1: private conversations like they're scattered witness memories basically, and loose
Speaker 1: allegations that are just kind of floating around. Nothing officially
Speaker 1: going to authorities, at least not yet. But even still,
Speaker 1: it seemed like Don couldn't help himself as he continued
Speaker 1: to at least occasionally insert himself into conversations about the
Speaker 1: crime in very strange ways. Now, at one point later,
Speaker 1: witness mentioned how Don reportedly discussed how many times Robbie
Speaker 1: even fell while stumbling out of the woods after lighting
Speaker 1: him on fire. Now that indicates he was watching this
Speaker 1: happen too. He was watching him run away. He stayed
Speaker 1: there and witnessed this entire thing. He didn't turn away,
Speaker 1: he didn't run away. He wasn't fearful of what he
Speaker 1: had done. He was watching the whole damn thing, which is.
Speaker 2: Kind of I don't know, Well, it's obviously very unsettling that.
Speaker 2: Do you think just being a thirteen year old boy
Speaker 2: seeing what you just did would alarm the shit out
Speaker 2: of you.
Speaker 1: Well, it didn't seem like it did, because there was
Speaker 1: also reports that would eventually come to light about how
Speaker 1: Dawn collected burnt pieces of clothing connected to the incident.
Speaker 2: Uh, you have literally two ends of the spectrum here,
Speaker 2: the most beautiful human and basically the worst.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, there was also allegations of their potentially being
Speaker 1: another boy present named Rex. As far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: this happened early in the investigation, but nothing really came
Speaker 1: of it. And still none of this information, whether it
Speaker 1: was the clothing that was potentially connected collected, this other
Speaker 1: boy who may have been present or may not have
Speaker 1: been present, or these other allegations of what he confessed
Speaker 1: coming to light, none of it was enough to reopen
Speaker 1: the case. It was just all rumors, and for years
Speaker 1: Robbie's attack remained suspended in a very strange place, as
Speaker 1: memories just faded, witnesses moved away, some people even died,
Speaker 1: Physical evidence degraded, and the case became increasingly difficult to
Speaker 1: prove with certainty, especially considering the weakness that had already
Speaker 1: caused prosecutors to back away in nineteen ninety eight. But
Speaker 1: then another devastating mistake happened in two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: Critical evidence collected from the original crime scene was destroyed.
Speaker 1: Now at the time, authorities still considered the case as
Speaker 1: an assault investigation rather than a homicide, and Since no
Speaker 1: charge had been filed against Dawn, the statue of limitations
Speaker 1: on certain offenses was believed to have expired, and so
Speaker 1: a judge signed a destruction order authorizing disposal of stored
Speaker 1: evidence connected to the case. Among those items destroyed were
Speaker 1: cigarette butts recovered from the woods, a lighter, fuel related materials,
Speaker 1: a plastic jug hose, and a gauge connected to a
Speaker 1: boat fuel tank, Burnt clothing, and other seen evidence investigators
Speaker 1: had preserved since the original date in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: And to top it all off, no DNA testing had
Speaker 1: ever been performed on many of these items, so by
Speaker 1: two thousand and six, much of the physical evidence from
Speaker 1: this crime scene was simply gone forever. Meanwhile, Robbie Middleton
Speaker 1: kept fighting for his health, and by the late two thousands,
Speaker 1: his body was still paying for the price of what
Speaker 1: had happened to him in the woods all the way
Speaker 1: back in nineteen ninety eight. The surgeries continued, the scar
Speaker 1: tissue continued tightening, chronic wounds continued reopening. Years of grass
Speaker 1: and reconstruction had placed enormous stress on his body, and
Speaker 1: yet people around Robbie consistently described him as positive now,
Speaker 1: even though Robbie was consistently in high spirits. Underneath all
Speaker 1: that optimism, there were still signs that the attack had
Speaker 1: never truly left him psychologically. According to his mother, Robbie
Speaker 1: sometimes believed he saw Don Collins outside watching him. It
Speaker 1: seems that even years later, the fear remained buried somewhere
Speaker 1: inside him, never really truly letting him rest. And then
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, everything changed. After more than a decade
Speaker 1: of surgeries and survival, doctors discovered that Robbie had developed
Speaker 1: an extremely aggressive form of squamos cell carcinoma, a rare
Speaker 1: cancer that medical experts later linked directly to the massive
Speaker 1: burn trauma and years of reconstructive skin graft procedures that
Speaker 1: he had undergone since nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2: Right there, it's like, how is life fair?
Speaker 1: Hey?
Speaker 2: I know that should not be something that happened.
Speaker 1: So at this point, Robbie was twenty years old, and
Speaker 1: although he had fought the odds over the course of
Speaker 1: these several several hard years, this time the prognosis was
Speaker 1: very different. Robbie was told he was dying. For years,
Speaker 1: he had survived surgeries, people never expected him to survive.
Speaker 1: He had adapted to pain most people could never imagine,
Speaker 1: but the cancer spread aggressively, and eventually doctors determined there
Speaker 1: was little more they could do, so as the time
Speaker 1: continued on and as Robbie's condition deteriorated, the unresolved question
Speaker 1: surrounding the attack that destroyed his life it still remained.
Speaker 1: Don Collins had never been prosecuted for burning him. The
Speaker 1: original case had collapsed years earlier, and despite persistent suspicions,
Speaker 1: no one had been convicted. Robbie knew that he had
Speaker 1: always known that, and according to his family and investigators,
Speaker 1: he wanted to finally tell the full story of what
Speaker 1: had happened to him that day before he died. So
Speaker 1: on April twelfth, twenty eleven, Robbie gave a videotaped deposition
Speaker 1: from his bed while receiving palliative care. The deposition lasted
Speaker 1: roughly twenty seven minutes, with Robbie being sworn in at
Speaker 1: the beginning. People who later saw portions of the recording
Speaker 1: described Robbie as physically exhausted and visibly weakened by the cancer,
Speaker 1: but despite the condition he was in investigators and prosecutors
Speaker 1: said he remained very focused while recounting the story. Of
Speaker 1: what had happened to him, and during the deposition, Robbie
Speaker 1: again identified Don Collins as the person who attacked him
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight, but this time he revealed far
Speaker 1: more than he had before. Robbie alleged that approximately two
Speaker 1: weeks before the burning had occurred, Dawn had committed sexual
Speaker 1: assault and rape against him in the wooded area near
Speaker 1: the Neighborhood trails. According to Robbie's account, the attack on
Speaker 1: June twenty eighth, when he was dosed in gasoline and
Speaker 1: lit a blaze. It happened because Dawn feared Robbie was
Speaker 1: eventually going to tell someone what he had done. Robbie
Speaker 1: also alleged that he was sexually assaulted again that same
Speaker 1: day during the day he was burned. According to later prosecutors,
Speaker 1: the motive behind the attack was twofold to destroy evidence
Speaker 1: connected to the earlier assault and to silence Robbi through terror, violence,
Speaker 1: and even the extent of possible death before he could
Speaker 1: report what had happened. Now for investigators this deposition, it
Speaker 1: changed everything. The original nineteen ninety eight case had largely
Speaker 1: centered around arson and aggravated assault allegations involving a child's suspect,
Speaker 1: But Robbie's final statement introduced a whole new alleged motive
Speaker 1: that prosecutors later argued transformed the crime into capital murder
Speaker 1: tied to another felony offense. Now, ultimately, I've alluded to
Speaker 1: this already, but seventeen days after giving that deposition, Robbie
Speaker 1: Middleton passed away. He died on April twenty ninth, twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: in Galveston, only weeks before what would have been his
Speaker 1: twenty first birthday.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, gracious.
Speaker 1: Doctors concluded that his death was due to the aggressive
Speaker 1: skin cancer that was tied directly to the ongoing medical
Speaker 1: issues that he suffered due to the arsenal assault years earlier,
Speaker 1: and so the medical examiner ruled his death a homicide.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, I don't know why, but I wasn't expecting that,
Speaker 2: but that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, just like that, Robbie's death changed the legal
Speaker 1: landscape around the entire case.
Speaker 2: Huh So.
Speaker 1: Almost immediately, renewed pressure began to build around Montgomery County
Speaker 1: authorities to revisit that investigation. Public attention slowly returned. Reporters
Speaker 1: began revisiting the story and questions resurfaced about why Dawn
Speaker 1: Collins had never been prosecuted despite Robbie naming him years earlier,
Speaker 1: and then the Middleton family did something unexpected. They launched
Speaker 1: a civil lawsuit. This was a civil wrongful death lawsuit
Speaker 1: directly against Don Collins, arguing that the injuries Robbie suffered
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety eight ultimately caused his death. Thirteen years later,
Speaker 1: an attorney, Ken Bigham Junior and Craig Sicco both took
Speaker 1: the case on pro bono, representing the family in this
Speaker 1: wrongful death suit against Dawn. Now this is not a
Speaker 1: criminal case. This is a civil case, mind you. From
Speaker 1: the beginning the goal was not The goal was not
Speaker 1: about money for them. That was not what they were
Speaker 1: After everyone involved understood Don Collins would almost certainly never
Speaker 1: be capable of paying any sort of meaningful damages, so
Speaker 1: instead the lawsuit became something else. Entirely a public spotlight
Speaker 1: placed back onto the case that many believe the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system had failed to resolve, and the civil proceedings
Speaker 1: centered heavily around Robbie's final deposition. Jurors heard about the
Speaker 1: attack in the woods, the years of suffering that followed,
Speaker 1: and the allegations that Dawn had sexually assaulted Robbie before
Speaker 1: burning him alive to silence him, and medical testimony connected
Speaker 1: Robbie's cancer directly to the injuries and skin graft procedures
Speaker 1: caused by the fire. The emotional impact over this was enormous,
Speaker 1: and by that point Robbie's story had already spread far
Speaker 1: beyond just Splendora. The image of an eight year old
Speaker 1: boy surviving burns over nearly his entire body for more
Speaker 1: than a decade, only to later die from long term effects,
Speaker 1: ultimately turning into cancer, horrified people across the country. In
Speaker 1: December of twenty eleven, a jury in Lagrange sided with
Speaker 1: Robbie's family and they awarded them a one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty billion with a b US dollars in damages against
Speaker 1: Don Collins. It became the largest civil verdict in American history.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, like, how would someone even begin to pay that?
Speaker 1: Well, that's the thing I'm going to clarify here, that number,
Speaker 1: it's purely symbolic.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Even the Middleton family and the attorneys, they openly admitted
Speaker 1: they never expected to actually collect any of that money.
Speaker 1: I'm like, how is he supposed to pay anything even
Speaker 1: close to that right. So, according to one of the attorneys,
Speaker 1: Greg Cicco, he was communicating with the jurors, and they
Speaker 1: later explained that they intentionally chose such an enormous figure
Speaker 1: because they wanted to make sure that their message was
Speaker 1: impossible to ignore. Basically, Yeah, like trying to attract national attention,
Speaker 1: trying to basically put a big stamp of like, there's
Speaker 1: something wrong here, law enforcement, look into it. It's not
Speaker 1: about the dollars, it's about the attention.
Speaker 2: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, And that's exactly
Speaker 2: what it's going to get.
Speaker 1: I'm as right, forcing people to look at what had happened. Basically,
Speaker 1: like Robbie, he was a victim, and he's he passed away.
Speaker 1: He was murdered, and the person responsible is walking away.
Speaker 1: So look at this case. Figure it out.
Speaker 2: Well, Yeah, just because something happened, what did you say
Speaker 2: thirteen years ago, Yeah, doesn't mean that it can't still be,
Speaker 2: you know, the act of a murder, the act of someone.
Speaker 1: Did this exactly now. At the same time, though, there
Speaker 1: was another growing concern see Down was expected to be
Speaker 1: released again. By then, he had already had a separate
Speaker 1: conviction involving the sexual assault of another young boy, and
Speaker 1: it spent years cycling through the criminal justice system on
Speaker 1: additional offenses, including repeated failures to register as a sex offender.
Speaker 1: So Robbie's family feared that if authority still failed to act,
Speaker 1: Don would simply return to society once again.
Speaker 2: And probably just continue doing bad shit exactly.
Speaker 1: But behind the scenes, they didn't know something important had
Speaker 1: already started happening. You see, not long after Robbie's death
Speaker 1: was ruled a homicide in twenty eleven, investigators in Montgomery
Speaker 1: County had already reopened the case as an official homicide,
Speaker 1: and detectives were rebuilding the investigation almost from scratch, and
Speaker 1: among the investigators assigned to the renewed case were cold
Speaker 1: case detectives Tommy Deroy and Terence Greenwood. Together with prosecutors
Speaker 1: and investigators, they began combing back through the enormous amount
Speaker 1: of material generated since nineteen ninety eight, and the scope
Speaker 1: of the review became absolutely massive. According to later testimony,
Speaker 1: investigators accumulated roughly fifty three thousand to fifty five thousand
Speaker 1: pages of reports and records. There were dozens of CDs
Speaker 1: with informations. There was banker boxes full of evidence and statements,
Speaker 1: and well over a hundred interviews connected to this case.
Speaker 1: Witnesses who had spoken publicly in the years prior were
Speaker 1: all tracked down again. Old statements were re examined, Detectives
Speaker 1: revisited inconsistencies from the original investigation, and searched for anything
Speaker 1: prosecutors can now use to support the charge of murder.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest changes was Robbie's deposition that videotape
Speaker 1: that became central to the entire reopened investigation and prosecutors
Speaker 1: belief Robbie's detailed account of the alleged earlier sexual assault
Speaker 1: and rape provided motive in a way the original investigators
Speaker 1: never fully understood in nineteen ninety eight, because, after all,
Speaker 1: now Robbie's not hallucinating anymore. He's very vivid about what
Speaker 1: he remembers. He is a witness to the event itself.
Speaker 1: New witnesses slowly began to emerge, too, and among them
Speaker 1: were the cousin Heather White, the cousin of Dawn, and
Speaker 1: he told investigators Don confessed to her shortly after Robbie
Speaker 1: was actually attacked, and she later testified. Don admitted sexually
Speaker 1: assaulting and raping Robbie, tying him up, setting him on fire,
Speaker 1: all that because he directly feared that Robbie would tell
Speaker 1: someone what happened. But even with all these new statements,
Speaker 1: there were still a major obstacle. Don Collins had been
Speaker 1: thirteen years old when Robbie was burned, and under Texas
Speaker 1: law in nineteen ninety eight, juveniles generally had to be
Speaker 1: at least fourteen years old before they could be transferred
Speaker 1: into adult court for a capital felony offense. Don had
Speaker 1: fallen below that threshold at the time of the attack.
Speaker 1: But by twenty eleven, however, Texas law had changed. The
Speaker 1: state had lowered the transfer age to ten years old
Speaker 1: for certain offenses after the original investigation had collapsed, so
Speaker 1: prosecutors now argued something legally significant. The murder itself had
Speaker 1: not technically occurred until Robbie died in twenty eleven. That's
Speaker 1: when the murder took place. That meant, according to the state,
Speaker 1: the newer law applied.
Speaker 2: Hmm, okay. So if he would have gotten charged or
Speaker 2: found guilty or whatever of this back when it happened.
Speaker 1: He would have been tried as a juvenile.
Speaker 2: He could have gotten away with it. Or lower sentence
Speaker 2: or just gotten away with a lot more exactly.
Speaker 1: But the fact that Robbie survived and then passed away
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven, that's when now they're looking at it
Speaker 1: as a homicide and now a new law is in place,
Speaker 1: and that's the law they're going with.
Speaker 2: Wow, I mean I like that, but also you know,
Speaker 2: it allowed him to also have another victim and hurt
Speaker 2: someone else.
Speaker 1: I know, and who knows who else he could have hurt,
Speaker 1: even if it's not like a sexual assault or a
Speaker 1: threatening or deathsent whatever, even if he's just being a
Speaker 1: bully or an asshole. Who else did he affect? Right?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I'm sure there's many now.
Speaker 1: Defense Attorney E. T. Bond strongly disagreed with this, though,
Speaker 1: but whether he disagreed or not, ultimately on March. In
Speaker 1: March of twenty fourteen, the issue finally came to a
Speaker 1: head during a three day discretionary transfer hearing before Judge
Speaker 1: Kathleen Hamilton. Witness after witness took the stand and investigators
Speaker 1: discussed the destroyed evidence from two thousand and six. Former
Speaker 1: victims testified about Dawn threatening to burn children if they
Speaker 1: spoke out. Heather white Don's cousin described the alleged confession
Speaker 1: she claimed Dawn made years earlier. Cold case investigators explained
Speaker 1: why they believe the case now contained evidence strong enough
Speaker 1: to finally proceed, and at one point during the hearing,
Speaker 1: Dawn himself even briefly took the stand, but he ended
Speaker 1: up invoking his Fifth Amendment right, stating quote I will
Speaker 1: remain silent. Meanwhile, prosecutors argued that Robbie's final deposition, combined
Speaker 1: with the new witness statements uncovered during the cold case investigation,
Speaker 1: fundamentally changed the strength of the case compared to when
Speaker 1: it occurred originally in nineteen ninety eight. The defense, though
Speaker 1: insisted nothing truly existed at all, But after hearing testimony
Speaker 1: for three days, Judge Kathleen Hamilton issued her ruling Don
Speaker 1: Collins would be transferred into adult court, and for the
Speaker 1: first time since Robbie Middleton stumbled burning out of the
Speaker 1: woods in nineteen ninety eight, the case was finally heading
Speaker 1: towards a murder trial. The trial for Robbie's murder began
Speaker 1: in early twenty fifteen. Prosecutors argued Don Collins burned Robbie
Speaker 1: Middleton in an attempt to silence him after committing rape
Speaker 1: and sexual assault against him weeks earlier. Their case centered
Speaker 1: around motive, witness testimony, Robbie's disposition, and Don's later criminal history,
Speaker 1: as well as numerous alleged confessions made over the years. However,
Speaker 1: defense attorney Tapond focused on several key arguments. There were
Speaker 1: no eyewitnesses, no one that saw Don commit the crime,
Speaker 1: There was no physical evidence that directly tied him to
Speaker 1: the attack, Robbie gave inconsistent statements in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 1: and trying Don as an adult violated constitutional protections.
Speaker 2: Uh, I just have to say, this defense person is
Speaker 2: really making me angry, and I kind of want them
Speaker 2: to shut the fuck up.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, trust me, I feel you now.
Speaker 1: There was a major issue though causation. The defense argued
Speaker 1: that prosecution could not definitively prove Robbie's cancer, thirteen years
Speaker 1: later legally constituted murder caused by the original Burns. Prosecutors, however,
Speaker 1: countered with medical experts who testified the cancer developed because
Speaker 1: of the devastating injuries and repeated graph procedures required to
Speaker 1: keep Robbie alive.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, he wouldn't have gotten this if he didn't
Speaker 2: have to go through everything he went through exactly now.
Speaker 1: One of the most emotional moments of the trial came
Speaker 1: when jurors watched portions of Robbie's videotape deposition, recorded just
Speaker 1: seventeen days before he ultimately died. The severely scarred, almost
Speaker 1: twenty one year old described the assault and identified Don
Speaker 1: Collins directly as the person who set him on fire
Speaker 1: that faithful day when he was just eight years old.
Speaker 1: In order to keep him silent, according to multiple reports,
Speaker 1: Don sat there in the courtroom with his back partially
Speaker 1: turned towards the projection screen and spent portions of the
Speaker 1: testimony reading a newspaper rather than watching Robbie.
Speaker 2: Speak, are you serious?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Oh what, God, a piece of shit.
Speaker 2: I cannot even believe how, I don't know, maddening. Everything
Speaker 2: that you're telling us is making I know.
Speaker 1: This is a fucked up kit. Like, if there's ever
Speaker 1: anyone in this world, I just want to fucking slap
Speaker 1: it's this.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, you want to just go on like with
Speaker 2: the shovel and just.
Speaker 1: Yeah, upside the head. Now. They went through every ounce
Speaker 1: of evidence that we discussed. They called forth all witnesses
Speaker 1: that they could and combed through every file they had
Speaker 1: to show Don was the monster who lit that fire
Speaker 1: and eventually snuffed out Robbie's life. And at one point
Speaker 1: during the closing arguments, lead prosecutor Rob Fryar told the
Speaker 1: juror something directly that I absolutely love. He turned to
Speaker 1: them and told them, quote today that little boy gets
Speaker 1: to hit back end quote. And on February ninth, twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: the jury found Don Collins guilty of the capital murder
Speaker 1: of Robbie Middleton.
Speaker 2: Thank goodness.
Speaker 1: On February tenth, the very next day, Don Collins was
Speaker 1: convicted of capital murder and jurors returned to the courtroom
Speaker 1: to decide his punishment. Under Texas law, the maximum sentence
Speaker 1: Don could receive was limited because he had been thirteen
Speaker 1: years old when Robbie Middleton was attacked in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1: He may have been tried as an adult, but his
Speaker 1: sentencing was still limited. Even though prosecutors successfully tried him
Speaker 1: this way, their hands were still a bit tied, but
Speaker 1: the jury gave him the maximum that they could, and
Speaker 1: he received forty years in prison. Now, because of Texas
Speaker 1: sentencing rules, Don will eventually become eligible for parole after
Speaker 1: serving roughly half that sentence, though parole is far from guaranteed.
Speaker 1: Defense attorney E. Ta Bond also announced plans to appeal
Speaker 1: all these things that largely focused on two arguments, whether
Speaker 1: Don could legally be tried as an adult under laws
Speaker 1: that changed after nineteen ninety eight, and whether Robbie's cancer
Speaker 1: legally constituted murder caused by the original burns, and those
Speaker 1: appeals were ultimately rejected.
Speaker 2: Okay, thank goodness, Like, why is this person bothering me
Speaker 2: so much? Like what is he doing? I know he
Speaker 2: was just doing his job, but seriously.
Speaker 1: For Robbie's family, the conviction brought relief, but not full closure.
Speaker 1: Throughout the proceedings, calling Middleton continued insisting that she believed
Speaker 1: another person had been present during the attack in the
Speaker 1: woods that day. According to her investigators years earlier suggested
Speaker 1: there may have been an unidentified adult on the trail
Speaker 1: with Dawn that day that Robbie was burned, but that
Speaker 1: mystery was never fully resolved and there was not much
Speaker 1: proof to go with it.
Speaker 2: Well, and I also just have to say, just seeing
Speaker 2: what kind of person Dawn is, I feel like they
Speaker 2: would have thrown that person under the bus pretty easily.
Speaker 1: Probably now whether there was someone else out there or
Speaker 1: not with Don that day, and we don't know. But
Speaker 1: Robbie's legacy continued growing far beyond the courtroom and the
Speaker 1: story of assault, arson, and murder. Inside the Gavelston Burn community,
Speaker 1: Robbie had become deeply respected for the way he handled
Speaker 1: unimaginable sufferingrapists. Nurses and doctors who worked with him remembered
Speaker 1: him not just for the scale of his injuries, but
Speaker 1: for the way he treated other people while enduring them.
Speaker 1: He became known for encouraging younger burn victims, helping with
Speaker 1: fundraising efforts, and advocating for the hospital that helped save
Speaker 1: his life, and eventually, the city of Galveston recognized his
Speaker 1: impact by declaring June twenty eighth Robbie's birthday as Robert
Speaker 1: Middleton Day. A plaque featuring Robbie's photograph and the city's
Speaker 1: proclamation was placed inside the Burn Center lobby. The attack
Speaker 1: on Robbie Middleton remained one of the most horrifying crimes
Speaker 1: many of the investigators and doctors and witnesses had ever encountered.
Speaker 1: An eight year old boy had walked into the woods
Speaker 1: on his birthday to go invite a friend to a
Speaker 1: backyard camp out, and he came back out burnt over
Speaker 1: nearly his entire body. By every medical expectation, Robbie should
Speaker 1: have died in nineteen ninety eight. Instead, he survived long
Speaker 1: enough to tell investigators what had happened to him and
Speaker 1: to make a positive impact in others' lives. More than
Speaker 1: sixteen years after the fire, a jury finally believed him.
Speaker 1: He was more than a victim. He was funny, kind
Speaker 1: and inspiring even in the face of unimaginable pain. But
Speaker 1: also Robbie Middleton, he has since become a symbol of resilience, compassion,
Speaker 1: and the refusal to stop fighting. And that's the story
Speaker 1: of Robbie Middleton. Oh that's a tough one to swallow.
Speaker 2: Almost feeling guilty because I am freaking angry. I don't know.
Speaker 2: This is one of the cases I think that's made
Speaker 2: me the most angry. But then you just have to
Speaker 2: sit back and try, Like Robbie wouldn't want that, right.
Speaker 1: I don't think he would, So I.
Speaker 2: Just trying to like get some of his energy, I
Speaker 2: guess you could say, because he was he just seemed
Speaker 2: like the most freaking incredible person ever, because he could
Speaker 2: have you know, given up or just been the complete opposite,
Speaker 2: you know, just sat there, kind of kept himself, not
Speaker 2: really even tried, and no one would or not try
Speaker 2: to engage with other people, and no one would honestly
Speaker 2: have even.
Speaker 1: Blamed him, No, not after what he went through.
Speaker 2: But the fact that he didn't do that and he
Speaker 2: was still you know, advocating and fundraising and stuff, Holy shit,
Speaker 2: that is just mind blowing to me that someone can
Speaker 2: be that amazing.
Speaker 1: Well, I even imagine like he was in constant pain,
Speaker 1: that's a sheer fact of his life. And so he's
Speaker 1: pushing through this pain to help other kids with burns
Speaker 1: go through what they're going through. He's going out and
Speaker 1: handing out flyers and fundraising all while he's still enduring
Speaker 1: his his own battle. But he's pushing that aside for
Speaker 1: other people.
Speaker 2: And would be an inspiration to them because if they're
Speaker 2: seeing him and what he's going through, right and maybe
Speaker 2: not saying what they are going through is far less
Speaker 2: or anything, but it might have been you know, maybe
Speaker 2: they were fifty percent burned or whatever. They're like, well,
Speaker 2: then if he can do this, like I can do.
Speaker 1: This exactly being an inspiration to those who need that
Speaker 1: an inspiration. Yeah, he didn't have an inspiration, he became
Speaker 1: the inspiration.
Speaker 2: And which is wild because yeah, no one like yeah,
Speaker 2: going the opposite way. Like I said, no one would
Speaker 2: blame you. So it just really shows the character that
Speaker 2: he had.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but to that Dawn character, fuck him.
Speaker 2: Oh, I know. I honestly think that there should be
Speaker 2: like a petition or something that he never ever gets
Speaker 2: out of jail.
Speaker 1: I agree, like the fact that he was just even
Speaker 1: in the courtroom just reading newspapers as as Robbie's deposition
Speaker 1: is playing, and he's just ignoring.
Speaker 2: It, this disrespectful piece garbage.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So ah, we've covered many a monsters on this
Speaker 1: on this podcast, with many of those tales, and that is, uh,
Speaker 1: that's a fucking monster I've ever seen one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because how could you not feel guilty or upset
Speaker 2: or bad for what you did?
Speaker 1: He clearly doesn't, though.
Speaker 2: I just don't even I don't understand.
Speaker 1: That though someone like that, they do not have a soul.
Speaker 1: That is my firm belief. Dawn does not have a soul.
Speaker 1: He's a fucking monster and he should rot period.
Speaker 2: M hm.
Speaker 1: My voice is getting raspy because I'm like starting to
Speaker 1: get fucking angry and I'm yelling and.
Speaker 2: Like, ah okay, but no, we're ending this with Robbie's energy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yes, Robbie was man like I said, an inspiration.
Speaker 1: The fact that he could push through that and still
Speaker 1: have you know, hope light in his eyes and even
Speaker 1: fight back seventeen days before he ultimately passed away and
Speaker 1: succumb to the injuries. Man, that's an inspiration.
Speaker 2: Oh, it really is. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I've got a bit of whiskey left in my glass,
Speaker 1: cheers us to Robbie, to Robbie, and then it's going
Speaker 1: down the hatch, and we got to try and make
Speaker 1: sure that on June twenty eighth we maybe have a
Speaker 1: moment for Robbie.
Speaker 2: No kidding, a post or something of sort.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm going to put it in my calendar because
Speaker 1: that guy he deserves the world, He really does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you took the words right out of me.
Speaker 1: So thank you guys for being here with us. If
Speaker 1: you want, go ahead and put June twenty eighth in
Speaker 1: your calendar as well. Yeah, he deserves it. That's all
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say. I'm just gonna end it. There, Thank
Speaker 1: you for being here. You guys are amazing and until
Speaker 1: next time, stay wicked. Th oh oh oh