CONWAY — A woman who authorities said stabbed her 7-year-old granddaughter and then set their house on fire, killing both of them, had not been taking medication for her bipolarism, a sheriff’s captain said Tuesday.
Janice Robbins and 7-year-old Abby Robbins, whom Janice had adopted in 2010, had no drugs in their bodies when they died in a Jan. 7 house fire in Mayflower, the state medical examiner’s office has found.
Faulkner County Coroner Patrick F. Moore saidthe medical examiner’s office also found that Abby died of a stab wound and smoke and soot inhalation. Janice, 63, died ofsmoke and soot inhalation, he said.
The medical examiner’s office ruled that Janice’s death was a suicide and Abby’s a homicide.
“That’s their [medical examiner’s office] findings, and we concur,” Moore said. The case is now closed, he added.
Sheriff ’s investigators had “good sources saying that she [Janice] was bipolar and she wasn’t taking medicine,” even though it had been prescribed for her, sheriff ’s Capt. Matt Rice said.
That was probably a major factor in what led Janice to kill herself and her granddaughter, Rice said.
“In my own opinion ... if she was bipolar, she was probably depressed. ... And if she wasn’t on the right medication to take care of that, that could cause some issues,” he said.
The coroner said the autopsy reports “indicate that there were no drugs in either” body - a finding that troubles Tom Robbins, Janice’s ex-husband and Abby’s paternal grandfather, especially since Janice was a retired military nurse.
Tom, who lives in Louisiana, said Tuesday that he would have been more prone to believe Janice had committed the killings if there had been drugs in the bodies.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that she would have been capable of mixing up even over-the-counter drugs” if she had wanted “and they [Janice and Abby] wouldn’t have been conscious at all” and sufferedpain, he said.
But he added, “I think the people that commit suicide ... are not in their right minds.”
“I know she [Janice] was under a great deal of stress” from the shooting deaths of two of her three sons, one in 1991 and Abby’s father in 2005, Tom added.
Janice also had taken on “the responsibility of raisingAbby, but she seemed to really want to do it. She went to a lot of expense and a lot of time to see that Abby was raised properly.”
Janice’s actions over the years - moving to another city in hopes of finding a better life for Abby and enrolling Abby in a Catholic school, for instance - show that “she was looking forward to a long life with Abby and [to] Abby growing up to be” a young woman, Tom said.
On the day of the fire, authorities found what theydescribed as a brief suicide note in Janice’s pickup parked outside her house near Lake Conway.
“I can’t stand to see Abby left behind,” she wrote, according to sheriff’s Maj. Andy Shock. “Pray for my soul.”
Authorities also found Janice’s purse, bank account information, Abby’s birth certificate and other items.
“It might not have been necessarily a suicide note because it didn’t say she [Janice] had planned this,” Tom said. “But then again, we don’t know, and I don’t know if we’ll ever know.”
“I’ve been praying about it, and I think I’ll just have to accept it ... They’re not going to find anything else because they’re not looking,” he said, referring to investigators.
Still, he said, “I don’t think anyone’s trying to cover anything up. I just thought it [the police investigation] was kind of fast” because authorities announced their conclusion that the killings were a murder-suicide on the Monday after the Saturday deaths.
The deaths occurred the day before Tom’s birthday.
“I’ll be reminded every year,” he said. “The pain will lessen and will get better, but it won’t go away.”
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 03/28/2012