Gillin couple admit killing their retarded daughter

By Lawrence Walsh, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

James and Roberta Gillin have confessed to killing their mentally retarded adopted daughter in July 1992, burning her body in a backyard pit and then burying her ashes and bone fragments in a wooded lot across the road.

State police said the Gillins, who were living at the time on Oak Ridge Road in Bear Rocks, Fayette County, confessed to killing Helen Gillin after they were arrested Wednesday morning at their current home in Yukon, Westmoreland County. The couple are in the Fayette County Prison in Uniontown.

State police investigators and a faculty-student group from Mercyhurst College, led by noted forensic anthropologist Dennis C. Dirkmaat, arrived at the wooded lot yesterday to search for the victim's remains.

"It's like an archeological dig out there," a state police spokesman said. "They're down on their hands and knees digging carefully."

Russ Peters, a neighbor, said the group was concentrating on a portion of the lot that is "directly across from the road from where the Gillins used to live."

James Gillin, 52, and Roberta Gillin, 50, are charged with homicide, abuse of a corpse and conspiracy. They were arraigned Wednesday before District Justice Robert W. Breakiron of Connellsville and sent to prison without bond. Their hearing is scheduled for 1 p.m. Monday.

According to affidavits of probable cause submitted to Breakiron by the state police, the slaying of Helen Gillin, 25, occurred in July 1992 after Roberta Gillin accused her husband of having a sexual relationship with the victim.

Roberta Gillin mixed a blue laundry detergent and some kind of heart medication and gave it to Helen, who was said to consume anything she was given to eat or drink.

When she vomited the concoction in the back yard, James Gillin became enraged and ran out the back door of the split-level home screaming, "I'm going to kill you."

He then began to stomp on the victim.

A knife also may have been used in the slaying.

The affidavits said the Gillins then dumped their daughter's body in the burn pit, doused it with gasoline and kept the fire going through the night. They removed the remains and disposed of them. They then put animal bones in the pit to conceal what they had done.

The killing was witnessed in part by the couple's other daughter, Mary Jo, then 13.

The Gillins' three sons, all now adults, apparently weren't home at the time. Anyone who asked about Helen was told that she ran away with a boyfriend.

State police first learned about the killing in February 1995 when a troubled Mary Jo, who had been living with the horrible secret for 2 1/2 years, decided to confide in Sandra Mae Wiltrout, a teen-age friend who lives in South West, a village in Mount Pleasant.

Wiltrout told her mother-in-law, Marjorie Ann Wiltrout of Mount Pleasant, and Marjorie Wiltrout called the state police. The police interviewed Mary Jo, who agreed to wear a recording device to see if her parents would incriminate themselves on tape. But portions of the tape were inaudible.

In March 1995, state police arrived unannounced at the Gillin home, dug up the burn pit but apparently didn't find enough evidence to charge the Gillins.

The investigation languished until April, when state police re-interviewed Mary Jo, now 20, who was able to give them additional information.

"The investigation was like a big puzzle, and she was able to provide a few more critical pieces of information," an investigator said.

Neither Marjorie Wiltrout nor Sandra Wiltrout could be reached for comment yesterday. Mary Jo, whose last name is now Overly, also couldn't be reached.