DV Month Bonus - Crimelines presents - Joanna Simpson

0:00 To listen ad free visit sinspod dot co slash subscribe starting at two ninety nine a month. You'll also get access to our exclusive bonus content episodes when you join through Patreon or Apple subscriptions. Thanks for supporting the show. Year after year, thousands of unsolved murders or missing persons cases take place in the United States, leaving families searching for answers. The annual Cold Case Symposium allows families to share their loved one story in a safe and comfortable environment that provides resources and mobilizes support. Presenting the twenty twenty four Cold Case Symposium, an assembly of hearts and minds determined to make. A difference, hosted by Purdue University, the University of North Florida, and Project cold Case.

0:45 Join us as we bring together victim advocates, law enforcement professionals, cold case detectives, and survivors, each contributing their own personal perspective and lived experience. Project cold Case, founded in twenty fifteen, stands as a pillar of support for families affected by unsolved homicides. Through awareness, counseling, support groups, and case specific strategies, we offer both emotional healing and a path forward. This symposium is open to all families, students, advocates, academics, law enforcement, and community members who want to show their support, raise awareness, and discover the available resources. Connect with us on Instagram and Twitter at Case Underscore Symposium for updates and insights leading up to the event.

1:33 Family members of cold case victims or missing persons are eligible for complementary registration through a sponsorship program. To apply, email me doctor Crystal Hans at Hans three at Purdue dot edu with your name, phone number, a brief narrative about your loved one and how you heard about the symposium. Please join us on Tuesday October twenty second and Wednesday October twenty third, twenty twenty four at the University of North Floes or virtually for our annual event spotlighting cold Cases. Join us for real stories. Real support, real resources. Hi, and welcome to the second of our What Happens Here, Happens Everywhere Domestic Violence Awareness Month bonus episodes. I'm Sean and with me as always is the one and only John.

2:23 I am the only John in the room. This week we have a special presentation from Crimelines. Charlie, the host of Crimelines, is an incredible storyteller, and she includes historical and cultural information on the cases and stories she discusses to get to the why behind what happened. For this episode, Charlie tells the story of Joanna Simpson, a mother from Berkshire, England, who was brutally murdered by her husband on Halloween in twenty ten. It's another case where you'll have trouble believing the defense he attempted to mount. When you're done, head over and check out Charlie's podcast Crimelines at www dot basementfork Productions dot com and make sure of follow her on all the socials. And now a special presentation of Crime Lines.

3:16 Judges see a lot in their courtrooms, but when Joanna Simpson's estranged husband went on trial for her murder, even the judge couldn't hide his shock at what happened. I'm Charlie and welcome to Crime Lines. Welcome to crime Lines. In this week's episode, I want to say that for any Patreon or supercast supporter with a July birthday, listen through to the end for your shout out. After getting some feedback and talking with other podcasters about how they handle things like shout outs and announcements for events and things like that. I decided that I'm going to start running any announcements events. I'm going to things like that at the beginning of the episode, before the content even starts, and then during this portion, I won't have to do announcements, so you're not gonna hear me say let's jump into it and then have to listen to me chat about going to Denver or Boston or wherever the next meetup's going to be. And to do that to make space in what's called the pre role for the announcements, I'm going to take the birthday shout outs and move them to the end like other podcasters do with their Patreon shout outs. So that is just a format change, and I don't want anyone to think I didn't get the birthdays done just because they don't hear them. Now, just keep listening and we will get to them. So welcome to today's episode and what will hopefully be the last

4:47 episode where you have to listen to two minutes of announcements before we get into the case. With this episode, I did use a number of sources, but I need to thank a UK based listener named Laura. She not only recommended the case, but took notes for me from a two part documentary called The British Airways Killer. It came out in February of twenty twenty four and it is not available for viewing outside of the UK, or at least not in the US. I even had someone try to use a VPN to get around it, but it didn't work. So a huge thank you goes to Laura for her assistance. This case starts with Joanna Simpson, who was born in nineteen sixty four in York, England, and when she was around ten, her father, Christopher Simpson, sold a pretty successful building business that he was part owner two. The sale was a financially great move and so Chris and his wife Diana packed up and moved their kids, James and Joanna, to the Isle of Man.

5:53 For those of you who are not up on your geography, the Isle of Man is an island and it is in the Irish Sea between Britain and Ireland. Joe grew up on the coast in Laxi and it was a pretty idyllic childhood growing up in the countryside. After finishing the UK equivalent to high school, Joe went to Bath university to study business, and then in the mid nineteen nineties she got married. This marriage only lasted for three years, but it did end amicably enough. The marriage was just a mismatch of personalities and they didn't have kids together, so there wasn't a huge drama with the divorce. Even so, obviously, Joe was still mourning the loss of the dream of the marriage and the future plans she had with her husband, and she was feeling pretty down because of that. Her friend Andy suggested that she go on a trip with him.

6:54 They would travel to South Africa for a little getaway. Andy worked for British Airways, so this trip would be very affordable because even if she had to pay for a flight, it wouldn't be very much. Some sources say that this trip was in March of nineteen ninety eight. I've seen other sources say it was actually in November, but I'm not sure how that would fit into the full timeline. Regardless, on that flight, and he introduced Joe to the other crew members, which included First Officer Robert Brown, who was from Edinburgh. He had grown up always wanting to be a pilot and he was very passionate about his job. He regularly did the long haul roots, so we're talking South Africa, San Francisco, Hong Kong. He wasn't flying people from London to Paris. Joe and Rob really hit it off and from the time they met the relationship was pretty serious. Joe went home telling her parents all about this wonderful man she had met. So just imagine their surprise when they meet Rob and they find him to be cold, aloof and somewhat rude. You know, when you're going to meet your girlfriend's parents for the first time, you would put your best foot forward, and if this was his best foot, they hated to think what is worst foot would be. Joe, however, saw something

8:27 in him which was really part of her personality. She was a friendly person, got along well with people, She was outgoing, and she was like that because she saw the best in the people around her. In spite of her parents' apprehension over the match, things moved very quickly, so by September, Rob had moved into Joe's house and asket, which is about fifteen minutes southwest of Windsor Castle and yes, it is where the horse races are. It's also just about a thirty minute drive to Heathrow, which was very convenient for Rob and his work as a pilot. In November, the two started talking about marriage and kids, which feels kind of fast, but we do have to remember that they were in their mid thirties at this point, and probably to some degree they were feeling that clock ticking.

9:20 I did see one source that said Joe had attempted fertility treatments during her first marriage, so it may have been one of those situations where they worried it would take a long time to get pregnant and they might as well start sooner rather than later. But like I said, I only saw one source mention that. So in December of nineteen ninety eight, while they were on a trip to Hong Kong, Rob proposed and Joe said yes. After the engagement, Joe's father wisely suggested that they sign a prenuptial agreement. Joe had quite a bit that she was bringing into the marriage, which included her house and a truck fund. I'm sure her parents' own apprehension about their marriage and their relationship fueled this suggestion, but Rob and Joe both agreed to it. Rob said he was fine with signing it because he didn't really care about the money.

10:18 The pre nup would only come into play if the two divorced, and neither of them entered their marriage thinking it would eventually end. After the proposal, Rob did not want a long engagement. He actually suggested a February wedding, which was just about as soon as they could plan, even the small ceremony they had, so on February thirteenth, nineteen ninety nine, with close friends and family gathered, they married. They then left for their honeymoon to South Africa, which was the same place they had met not quite a year before. While they were there, Joe called her mother pretty upset. She had been noticing some things about Rob that maybe she hadn't noticed before or she just brushed off, but it was sticking out to her on this trip, how rude he was to the staff at the hotel and the restaurants they went to. This wasn't news to people who knew Rob longer than Joe did. There are a number of stories from his coworkers about his rude behavior, but it was the first time Joe was seeing him in this way. She told her mother that she was afraid she had made a mistake. After the honeymoon, the two returned home to ask it and if Joe was second guessing her decision and maybe contemplating an annulment, even if in the back of her mind the idea was quickly extinguished in April when she found out that she

11:50 was pregnant. It ended up not taking them long at all to conceive. In December of that year, their son was born, and then seventeen months months later, their daughter was born. With two little ones and a husband whose job took him overseas frequently, it made more sense for Joe to stay at home and tend to what the kids needed. She just didn't have a husband who had a job that let him take off a random Tuesday because a kid was sick and couldn't go to daycare, or someone who could pick up the kids on a night Joe had to work late. Financially they could afford it. Logistically it made sense. But most of all, it was what Joe really wanted to do. She wanted to be that hands on, do what all mother, and that's what she was. Something else that was very important to Joe as an outgoing and social person, was making friends with other parents. She ended up with almost an open door policy for her friends coming over to hang out, having dinner together, or just stopping in for a playdate before naptime when Rob would be home, Joe would want to pull him into this social circle, but he would be reluctant to join in any of the socializing. He usually just did his own thing. But when he was forced to be sociable, Joe's friends saw him much the way her parents had rude, arrogant, and dismissive. Early on in

13:22 their marriage, Joe would make excuses like he was shy, or he was tired, or he was stressed. Some of their friends felt like there might be a socioeconomic or class issue at play. They lived in a wealthy area and Joe had grown up that way, so most of her friends were also at least well to do. But Rob hadn't grown up that way. He grew up with a mom who worked at the bank and a dad who worked in the shipyard. Some described him as having a bit of a chip on his shoulder about it, but Joe as always tried to paint him in the motion most compassionate light possible. Eventually, as the years passed, though, Joe stopped making excuses for Rob, mainly because she couldn't.

14:12 His rudeness escalated to where he would make fun of her and put her down in front of people. There basically became nothing left for her to say to defend him, and after she stopped defending him publicly, Joe also stopped giving him a pass in private. She was done walking on eggshells around him to appease him. She wasn't wanting or expecting love or affection from Rob, so she was pulling away because frankly, she was done, and Rob noticed. Of course he did. For so long, he used Joe's desire for a happy marriage as a way to have control over her, over the home, and over their relationship.

14:58 Once Joe stopped that or expecting it from him, and especially when she stopped fighting for it, he started losing power. Rob thought the change might be because Joe was cheating on him. He took to watching the log of the alarm codes to track when Joe got home in the evenings while he was away. Based on credit card transactions, He purchased a tracker that he later admitted he intended to put in Joe's car, But Joe wasn't cheating on him. The truth was that years of mistreatment will make your partner not want to be around you. Joe didn't need another man in the wings to know that she didn't want to be with the man she had. In January of two thousand and seven, just shy of their eighth wedding anniversary, Joe went to see a solicitor to talk about her options when it came to a divorce. Then in February, Rob was away on a trip to Hong Kong when he called Joe one night. She had friends over, thankfully because she definitely needed their support after he basically told her that he was having quote unquote dark thoughts.

16:13 They included suicidal and homicidal ideation, everything from family annihilator type acts to crashing the plane he was supposed to fly back. Joe got off the phone with Rob and immediately called one of his friends to have them check in on him. If he was suicidal, she wanted the friend to intervene, and if he was homicidal, they needed to contact British Airways to stop Rob from flying. This friend checked on Rob and got back to Joe. Rob was totally fine. There was absolutely no hint of the things he had said to Joe. Joe's friends who were over at the house and witnessing this and seeing how upset Joe got, they saw this for what it was.

17:02 It was a manipulation tactic. It was a desperate move by Rob to regain control. If Joe didn't get back to appeasing him and making sure he was happy, she would bring on all of these terrible things. But it was all in act. At this point, Joe realized the marriage was pretty much over and she wanted Rob to move out. He refused. Eventually he had no choice but to move out after an incident at the house. The exact date seems unclear, but roughly in July of two thousand and seven, Joe went out with the kids and she got home around ten pm. She and Rob put the kids to bed, and while doing so, one of them mentioned the people they had been with that night.

17:50 One of the names was a man who Rob suspected Joe was having an affair with. So after the kids were in bed, Rob just started in on Joe, accusing her of cheating on him and starting just this big fight, and then he pulled out a knife. He held it towards her chest while holding the back of her neck. Joe tried to de escalate the situation by leaning on the one thing other than himself that he cared about. She told him to think about the kids. She asked him what would happen if he killed her, and he answered, you would be dead and I would be in prison.

18:34 Whether it was the thought of prison or the thought of leaving his children parentless, we don't know, but Rob put down the knife. After things calmed down enough, Joe called her friend Belinda and asked her to come over. It was around midnight, so Belinda was really worried about why Joe needed her over at that time. She hurried to the house and Joe met her outside and told her what had happened. Belinda said, just did they call the police? But Joe didn't want to do that. If the police came and they went in the house and woke up the kids, they would be scared, and it would also cause them to look poorly on their father. Joe wanted this entire thing to have as little impact on the children as possible, even if that meant not reporting this incident. But knowing that there was safety in numbers, Belinda stayed the night. She and Joe locked themselves in a room together and waited until Rob went to sleep in a spare room. Then they went to sleep together in the same room. When they got up in the morning, Joe called her parents, who told her to get the kids and fly to the Isle of Man immediately, which is what they did. While there, Joe had a call with Rob, and she had her mom listen in. Joe said that they just could not exist under the same roof anymore after he had pulled a knife on her, and he told her not to tell anyone about the incid or it would be the worst for her. Joe

20:05 did not report the incident in a separate police report, but some sources say she used it to get a restraining order against Rob for a year. Some other sources say that this was a consent order, with Rob promising to leave her alone, but that didn't exactly happen. He did move out, and the rule was that Rob couldn't come on the property except to drop the kids off after his parenting time, and Joe pretty much always had someone at the house to dissuade Rob from starting something, but he would still push it. Sometimes he would put one foot just inside the door just because he could, he would randomly drive by the house and stand on the edge of the yard. And this was all in spite of Rob finding a girlfriend almost as soon as they split up. I think the hint here is that he may not have waited until the separation to start seeing other people. But regardless, he had a new girlfriend very quickly. So he moved out and he moved on, but he was still not ready to settle the divorce.

21:13 Joe and Rob separated in two thousand and seven, but the divorce it dragged on through two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine, and most of twenty ten. Rob kept complaining that it was just unfair he was stuck with that prenup. Joe would be able to move ahead in life with her trust fund plus the house, which had appreciated in value. Also, Joe had opened up a bed and breakfast as the kids got older. That business was doing quite well and had rave reviews. But Rob was claiming that they had used a large amount of his earnings to get that business started. It was basically unfair in light of all of this to have him quote unquote still pitched up with this pre nuptial agreement.

22:05 At the time prenups in the UK were not viewed as hard and fast binding contracts. We're gonna get more into that in just a second, but that is a reason Rob had to believe he could get a better deal than the prenup if he pushed this divorce in front of a judge. Joe's solicitor obviously knew this as well, which explains why Joe made a pretty generous settlement offer to Rob. It gave him more than he was entitled to if they stuck to the prenup, and it was enough of a solid offer that even his attorney told him to take it. It was as good as he could expect to get in court, and it would save him a ton in legal fees. But Rob refused. Whether he thought he could get a better deal in court or whether dragging this out was his way of punishing Joe, he would not take that offer. He started making accusations that Joe was hiding money from him, and at one point Rob had either said something or he filed something that had information in it that he shouldn't have known about, and Joe started to wonder if she had a friend who was backstabbing her and passing info on to Rob.

23:24 But then Joe found out that Rob had gotten the new alarm code from the children. They were young, they're easy to convince to give information, especially to a trusted adult like their father. So it turned out it wasn't a friend telling Rob things. He was going into the house when she wasn't there and looking through her documents. Joe ended up getting hidden cameras installed in her home. Now, for the record, it doesn't look like Joe was hiding anything any more than she was cheating on him as a woman trying to get out of a marriage from a husband who was doing anything he could to drag it out. In the spring of twenty ten, Joe found out that Rob's new girlfriend was pregnant. Surely, with another baby on the way with another woman, Rob would be even more motivated to settle things for everyone's sake. But of course it wasn't gonna be that easy. Rob was still insisting on taking this divorce in front of a judge, and their divorce date was set for early November twenty ten.

24:36 The date ended up being pushed out this far because in that same year twenty ten, there was a case in front of the UK Supreme Court that would directly impact Joe and Rob's divorce. It had to do with how the UK courts should handle prenups. This case was rod Maker vi. Granentino. The basics of the case were that an investment banker married an heiress and three months before they got married, they signed a prenup. This prenup was mutual on both sides and it said that their property would remain separated during their marriage and of course, in the event they divorced. Though they married and resided in the UK, they were both from European countries that recognized prenups, so it's likely they had both assumed it would be binding should they divorce, and divorce they did.

25:32 After about eight or nine years of marriage, they separated, and in two thousand and eight the husband wanted the prenup kicked out. During the marriage, he had changed jobs to go into academia and his salary was significantly reduced at that point. That was a pretty big change in circumstances from when they got married. Plus he said his wife had hidden from him the extent of her wealth. The prenup was largely disregarded in their divorce proceedings because, like I mentioned before, the UK courts did not view them as binding contracts. They were viewed as contrary to public policy because people should not have a contingency plan for divorce. If that's the way you're entering a marriage, are you really committed to your vows? Now, for the record, i'm pro prenup in cases like this. That's definitely not my opinion. It's just what the UK courts were basing theirs on. So the initial judge for their divorce ordered that the husband be given two of their houses, around five million pounds of the wife's inheritance plus child support.

26:46 She appealed the decision and the Court of Appeal cited with her ruling that the prenups should have been given decisive weight in the divorce, So they basically took away the five million pounds giving him housing and child support since those were more related to him as a husband and a father. The money the wife had brought into the marriage was untouched as outlined in the prenup. So then he appealed it and it went to the Supreme Court. This case would decide how prenups are viewed in UK divorces. Were they fully arguable or were they to be given decisive weight. The Supreme Court, in a majority ruling, dismissed the husband's appeal, stating that the prenups should be stuck to as long as it was freely entered into, without duress or fraud, and so long as it was still fair.

27:42 So there was still some room to argue should a heavily one sided prenup risk someone being left destitute. But on the whole, the UK was going to function like much of Europe and the United States in recognizing prenups as contract. This was a huge blow to Rob's side of the divorce. Joe had made a fair and reasonable offer to him beyond what he agreed to in the prenup, so he was going to have a hard time arguing against it in court. When their November twenty ten hearing happened, he was likely going to get just what the prenup offered, possibly some of what Joe had offered him, but that was it. Joe knew this ruling was going to make her day in court a lot easier, but she also confided in a friend that she was worried about what else Rob would use to drag things out, And I think on her part this was a good observation. She was seeing that it wasn't necessarily about these individual issues, but rather his need to exert control. On Sunday, October thirty first, twenty ten, so eleven days after the Supreme Court ruling and about a week before Joe and Rob's court date, Joe was at home waiting on the kids.

29:07 She had taken them to the Isle of Man for half of their school break, and then they went with Rob for the second half. Joe was talking to her friend Hetty on the phone that day, and since the children, who were nine and ten at the time, had been away for a full week, she was planning to make their favorite dinner and a special dessert. She was on the phone with Hetty when Rob texted to see if he could drop the kids off a little later than planned, and Joe agreed to a four pm drop off. But then at three pm, while still on the phone with Hetty, Joe saw Rob drive up. No one was at the house with her that day, even though Joe liked to have someone around at custody exchanges, but this was the school break, so a lot of her friends were out of town. Joe asked Hetty to just stay on the line and witness the custody exchange over the phone, and Hetty agreed. But Rob never brought the kids up to the door. He just drove off. Now, Rob did weird things like that, just showing up driving by standing in the yard. So they brushed it off. I mean, if I was them, I would think it was some kind of setup, like telling her the kids were going to be home at four, but then showing up early to catch her either not at home or not ready for them, and then he could use that in court. That's where my brain would have went, and so I'm not surprised they just brushed it off. Hetty and Joe wrapped up their call with plans to talk again later in the evening,

30:38 but when Hetty called back, and when Joe's other friend, Belinda tried to call, Joe didn't answer. The next morning, on Monday, November one, two thousand and seven, Robert Brown called the police around eight thirty in the morning. He said he wanted to make an appointment to come to the police station to report an incident that had happened the day for He was asked what the incident was and he said it was a domestic issue. He was told by the operator that it was their policy to send an officer out within the hour, but Rob said he just wanted an appointment because he had kids with him and he didn't want to upset them. I'm going to go ahead and play part of the call for you which I got from the telegraph.

31:27 Let me take the details from me, ok, then will I will go on to odd Ivy will book an appointment with you. You cause explained to me what the situation is. Well, I've spoken to my lawyer and he said not to say anything. So that's why he said that. The incidence of a serious nature. Right, Well, you say serious because I need to highlight this to the officer of how serious it is. And this only lies of me passing it to the officer. Can I ask what it is? How serious? H I really don't I want to see anything. Actually come else? Why? I mean, this is confidential, this is between me you.

32:12 Well, because it's well, it's I mean, it's extremely serious nature and. Obviously it's regarding with your ex partner. Yes, okay, and the instance occurred recently, Yes, yes, that's right. And then you're you're both okay, are you You're not? None of you are harmed at all, are you? Well, well, we have when one. Person is right, okay, if that person seeking any medical attention, do you know do they need it? No? No, And you've got children and fold as well. Yes, okay, but they're with you at the moment and.

32:52 They're safe with me. Okay. Your friends, look, so they live with your girl? Is that your girlfriend that's in the situation once? Okay, that's fine. So they're all okay, but you want to come and discuss this. You're right when you're too serious okay. And I'm only going to buy assumption. I'm assuming it's something that you have seeked because you're worried about the consequence. Listen, okay, right, let me take some details from you. Can I start with your name? My name is Robert Brown. So Rob called his lawyer, and his lawyer told him not to say anything, but he called anyway. He also said it was serious, but that no one needed medical attention.

33:39 After Rob gave his name, an address, and then Joe's information, the police sent an officer out to her house for a welfare check. Anyway, they still had the appointment with Rob, but they wanted to make sure Joe was okay. First. When they got to her house around nine am, she didn't answer the door. They decided to go had enforced entry due to their concerns for her well being, and they still didn't find her anywhere in the house. However, they did find blood on the stairwell. The police continued to search Joe's house and property, which led to the discovery of more blood. There was some near the fireplace and then next to our car. There were two small pools of blood with the discovery of blood at Joe's house.

34:27 When Rob showed up at the station a bit after ten am for his scheduled appointment, the police immediately took him into custody. It was around the same time that Joe's friends started realizing something was wrong. Her housekeeper showed up to find police on the property. The kid's school called one of Joe's friends, who was the emergency contact, because the kids hadn't shown up for class that morning, and they all started calling and texting each other to see if anyone knew where Joanna and the kids were. One friend reached out to Joe's mother, Diana and asked if she had heard from Joe that day. She hadn't, and the friend told her that there was yellow police tape around the house, but the police were not saying anything.

35:14 On hearing this, Diana immediately said Rob must have killed her, but all the police would tell her over the phone was that the kids were okay with their father's family, but Joe was missing. So Diana and Joe's brother James, took the next flight from the Isle of Man to London and when they got there, they went and picked up Joe's kids from Rob's brother. In the meantime, Rob was at the police station, not saying much, though he walked through the police station door voluntarily. He was being held under suspicion of murder and he was absolutely not free to go. But the investigators were still holding out hope that Joe was alive somewhere, but alive, so they really wanted to know where she was and Rob's response was no comment. This wasn't exactly what they expected, since Rob literally turned himself in he called them, and now he wanted to remain silent. They asked a few questions, like if Joe was injured, and he just kept replying no comment. They even played the recorded nine nine nine call and asked what he meant by it being serious, but that no one needed medical attention. Was that because someone was dead, But Rob wouldn't answer that, instead complaining

36:44 that the operator told him the call was confidential and clearly it was not. All that the investigators interviewing Rob got from him was the overwhelming sense that this was an angry, angry man. Since Rob wasn't talking, the police went to the children, who again were just nine and ten at the time. They wanted to know what, if anything, they witnessed. The interview was conducted very carefully given their ages, but even still, Joe's son was not able to be interviewed. It was much too hard for him, but her daughter was able to answer some basic questions. She said that when their dad took them home, their parents got into a fight and they were hitting each other, but she didn't actually see anything. She just heard banging, she said.

37:40 Rob then carried Joe to the car, and the kids asked him to take her to the hospital, but he wouldn't answer them. Rob had the kids get into the car and then he dropped them off at his house with his girlfriend, who I'm sure was pretty surprised the kids were back so quickly. Rob then left again. Rob came home in the morning, but the daughter said she did not see her mom after that. Rob's girlfriend told the police that he had been gone all night, getting home around five am. She had been pretty worried in those overn eight hours because the kids were crying when he brought them back, and all they would say was that they saw blood. So she had called Rob's parents, who still lived in Scotland, so they in turn called Rob's brother, who had turned out ended up calling the police himself that morning. He was worried about Joe's well being just from what he heard that he called about forty minutes before Rob did. The following day, on November two, with Rob still in custody, the investigators attempted another interview.

38:50 They told him that they were only going to talk to him about background information. The investigator suspected that Rob was a narcissist, or at least had those tendencies, so they decided to make this interview all about Rob, and this approach worked. Rob was willing to talk about the relationship with Joe, and, more importantly, to him, the unfair nature of the divorce. He said she made up a story about him pulling a knife on her basically as a way to manipulate things, so she had an excuse for a divorce when she didn't really have a good reason. And then with the divorce, Joe wasn't being fair or transparent.

39:34 Rob said he found out that her trust fund was worth a lot more than he thought. And he claimed he learned this because a letter with the amount on it just so happened to appear on his desk. I'm sure it's not a paper he saw when he broke into her house. With Rob a little warmed up to this idea of talking to the investigators, they decided to show him some of the interview with his daughter. They showed him, particularly a part that showed her upset and crying. Rob watched it. He was told his daughter needed to know what happened, and then he said no comment, and then the no comment replies continued. Rob would only talk about Joe prior to October thirty first. After that point he had no comment. So the next day the police interviewed him again, and again he would only talk up to a certain point, but they did manage to push him to talk a little bit more about October thirty first.

40:38 In some vague terms. He basically got up to when he took the kids back to Joe, and then he stopped, so they backed up and they tried to build up to it again, trying to pressure him to cross that invisible line he had drawn. He eventually admitted that he and Joe argued about the kids' school when he dropped them off. They then showed him photos of the blood in her house, and Rob then asked for his attorney. This ended the interview, and Rob talked to his lawyer for about twenty to twenty five minutes before he said he was willing to continue the interview, and when they started it back up, Rob had a one page written statement that his attorney read out loud for the sake of the police recording. Rob wrote that he and Joe had an argument about the kids schooling when he dropped them off. He was angry because of what he called a long history of interference with contact with his children.

41:41 He said he lost control and pushed Joe at that point. He did not remember what happened next, except that Joe was hurt and he put her in the back of the car. He said he dropped the kids off at his house and he was planning to take Joe to the hospital, and he didn't know why he didn't just call him or agency services. Though we intended to bring Joe to the hospital, he realized that she was already dead, so he drove out to Windsor Great Park and he buried Joe's body in the woods. He said he was willing to lead the investigators to the spot. After his attorney read the statement, Rob started crying, saying that it was a mess and that he was not proud of himself.

42:28 Under further questioning, more of the story came out that undermined Rob's assertion that the attack was unplanned and that he didn't remember much of it. Rob admitted that prior to bringing the kids back to Joe's, he had put a hammer in one of the children's schoolbags. As the kids went into the family room, he stood in the front hall and there was a very short argument before he pulled out the hammer and struck Joe several times on the head. He then brought her body out to his trunk and covered her with plastic sheeting, and then he went back inside. He disconnected the phone and the security system Joe had installed. He then took the CCTV receiver recorder thing with him. He loaded the kids into the car, saying that he was taking their mom to the hospital. After bringing the kids back to his house, Rob grabbed coveralls the disposable type crime scene investigators where that he had on hand for some reason, and he also grabbed things like duct tape and zip ties. Then he went out to the park to bury Joe's body. So, if Rob didn't plan this, why did he have a hammer hid it in his kid's bag, And why did he just so happen to have plastic sheeting in his trunk?

43:55 And speaking of that, if his first intention was to bring her to the hospital, and why did he put her in the frickin' trunk? Clearly this was not a spur of the moment decision. So Rob conceded that he did decide that day he was going to kill Joe, and it was after he broke due to the stress. But there is evidence that he planned this even a longer, and that evidence was in the park. Rob told the police where to look for Joe's body, saying that it was hard to get to. It was in an area that vehicles couldn't reach, so he had to alternate between carrying her and dragging her. On November fourth, they were able to find the spot with Rob's assistance, and it truly was somewhere they never would have found had he not led them there. The top soil had been replaced, packed down, and even out, with such detail that it looked exactly like the surrounding ground. They excavated down about a foot when they came to the top of a plastic garden box, you know the type you might store yard tools in. We use ours to store the cushions from our outdoor furniture. That's the kind of box I'm talking about. They pulled off the cover and there they found forty six year old Joanna Simpson's body inside a black bag. Also in the box where items Rob had said he picked up at his house, which included the

45:28 duct tape, the coveralls, the cable ties, rubber gloves, and shoe covering. There was blood on some of these things and it would be a match for Joe. The autopsy was held the day after Joe's body was found, and she had died from severe blunt force trauma to the head. She had been struck at least fourteen times and she had defensive wounds to her arms. It was that grave site, though, that gave the police the greatest clue as to how long they believed Rob had been planning Joe's murder. There was absolutely no way he dug that hole the night he killed her. For one thing, this was not a shallow grave. It was a full six feet deep, and then the dirt was put back on with enough care that it fully camouflaged into the area. But more than that, the garden box was really crammed into the hole. The dirt had settled all around it, making it very difficult to pull out. It hadn't just been put there a few nights before. It had been there for at least a few weeks, if not months. To the investigators, this was evidence of clear cut premeditation. You don't go to the time and effort to dig a grave weeks or months in advance if you don't have a plan to put someone in it. This next part about the gravesite

47:02 might make your blood boil. With their mother dead and their father under arrest, the children were going to live with Joe's mother, Diana. She was willing to stay and ask it uproot her life just so the kids didn't have to uproot theirs, but they told her that they actually wanted to move to her house on the Isle of Man, so before they packed everything up, Diana offered to take the kids to where Joe had been found for a bit of a memorial and to leave some flowers. I don't know if you've ever been to Winter Great Park, but this isn't some dark and spooky forest. It's absolutely beautiful, and they felt that it would be a sad occasion, but a chance to help the children connect to their mother and really to what happened. Definitely not closure, but something close to it, and when they got out to the area, the children recognized it. Rob would take them there as recently as a week before Joe's murder, and there was a little spot nearby where the children would run around and play, and they called it their den.

48:16 This made the investigators wonder if Rob would leave the kids to play in their den while he dug what would become their mother's grave. It is possible he did, and he may have taken him out there a week before to check on the spot and make sure it hadn't been discovered. But even if he didn't, why that spot of all spots. Why take an area where your children have a fun memory, where they loved to play, and tie it so closely to what would become their greatest trauma. A man with that type of thinking in the investigator's minds is a dangerous man. But thankfully he was in custody. He had confessed, and he led the police to the body. There was evidence of premeditation. The case seemed pretty open and shut, but Rob was not going to plead guilty, well, not to murder. His defense latched onto something Rob mentioned to the investigators early on.

49:21 Rob said it was like a cup. You can only add so much before you hit your tipping point. And his cup had been poured into with legal fees and disagreements on schooling and court hearings and all the rest. Suddenly his stress spilled over. Now, the Crown didn't think Rob just spilled over. They believed Rob knew with the Supreme Court ruling that he was not going to get as much as he wanted in the divorce, and he may have ruined his chance at getting much at all when he turned down Joe's previous generous settlement offer. So yes, Rob had a lot of rage towards Joe, and that is why he killed her. But it wasn't in the heat of any moment. It was premeditated for at least weeks, but likely months. Rob, however, was sticking to his cup analogy.

50:14 He pleaded guilty to manslaughter but not guilty to murder due to insanity. In the UK, they used the McNaughton rule, which dictates how this would go. First, it was the defense's job to prove insanity, as every defendant is assumed sane. From there they would have to prove at the time Joe was killed, Rob either didn't know the nature or quality of what he was doing, and if he did know, he had to not know that it was wrong. The mental illness Rob had been suffering at the time, according to his defense expert, was an adjustment disorder. According to the Mayo Clinic, adjustment disorders are excessive reactions to stress that include negative thoughts, strong emotions, and changes in behavior.

51:04 The reaction to a stressful change or event is more intense than what you would typically expect. Rob's adjustment disorder was triggered by all of the stress in his life, particularly his divorce. It made him unstable and unable to control himself. When the trial was held in May of twenty eleven, the Crown countered with their own forensic psychiatrist who interviewed Rob while he was in jail. He said that Rob was actually a resilient person who was very much in control. In fact, Rob's career proved that he was a long haul pilot, which alone is a stressful job, and he held it down without issue during this entire divorce ordeal, which had gone on for three long years.

51:53 It looked like in his life, Rob was handling his stress just fine and was in control of himself. And even if he did have an adjustment disorder, the evidence showed that it was incredibly mild and would not have led to this level of violence. Now, Rob did take the stand in his own defense, which was a pretty surprising move, because if you're arguing that you had diminished capacity at the time of the crime, and then you get up on the stand and you see him reasonable and articulate and in control, it's going to be hard for the jury to see you in a different light. But Rob decided it was best if the jury heard from his point of view what happened in front of the jury, Rob denied the previous testimony about the knife incident, saying that Joe and her friend, the one who had come to spend the night with her, had made it up. Really, Joe was just a spoiled rich woman who pressured this working class Joe into signing an unfair pre nup. Now she was going to leave him in the lurch and keep from him money that should have been his Rob's testimony, his whole defense really was very hard for Joe's family and friends to listen to because they knew it wasn't true the stress he claimed she put him through. It was the other way around. From what they saw, Joe hadn't been holding him to the prenup. She made a settlement offer that was more than he would have gotten if they did stick to it. He's the one who

53:24 turned it down. He was the one holding out for more money. He treated her like garbage, then he killed her, and then he twisted it in court to basically say she made me do it. Unfortunately, the jury did not hear a lot from Joe's side of things. They didn't hear about the time the cable to her security lights was cut. They didn't hear about Rob admitting that he bought a tracking device to put on Joe's car, and they didn't hear about Joe's legal filings where she called him a bully. For some reason, the didn't even try to enter many of these things to show how Rob was twisting it all around. The Crown instead leaned very heavily on the evidence that this murder was planned and not a moment of insanity, and it seems pretty obvious.

54:18 He brought a hammer with him to her house, hidden in his kid's bag, and he left her in a pre dug grave. But Rob from the stand had answers for all of this. He testified that he was at his house and he was back in the shed when he saw the hammer. He picked it up and put it in his child's school bag, but he testified he wasn't sure why. Apparently this must be when his adjustment disorder kicked in and he was just working on autopilot. He then drove the kids to Joe's house and they started arguing about one of the children's medications, so he reached into the bag to pull out the medication, and that's when, according to this version of Rob's story, he blacked out. He remembered nothing until after Joe had been buried.

55:12 Let's not forget that Rob had said that the fight was about schooling, but now he needed an excuse to have gone into the bag where the hammer was, So now the fight was about the medication. And in this temporary insanity where he had no control, Rob then thought about the security cameras and grabbed the CCTV unit, but of course he claimed he had no memory of grabbing it. He actually said he still had the unit and the hammer with him after he buried Joe, so he buried those somewhere else in the park, but they have never been found. And as for the grave that he already had dug, Rob said it wasn't a grave. He had dug it over a year before as a symbol of burying his sham of a marriage. He intended to use it as a place to put all of the divorce papers, the pleadings, and the filings. He wanted to bury it like a time capsule, so that he could later dig it up and show his kids that the divorce and everything that happened was really their mom's fault. So, in his state of temporary insanity, he just so happened to remember, he conveniently had a grave size hole already dug. Just in case you forgot the details here, this man took the time and effort to dig a six foot hole in an area owned by the Crown Estate and put a box in there large enough to hold an adult body, so that he could store paperwork that could fit in a filing cabinet. Rob seemingly blacked out on every detail

56:47 except his attempts to get away with killing somebody. The trial was originally slated to take three weeks, but it ended up only taking ten days, and when the jury took the case to deliberate, they spent several hours discussing it. Eventually, according to Berkshire Live, the judge told them that he would accept a majority verdict. Now I have not seen it anywhere else that there may not have been a unanimous vote in this case. Majority verdicts are not used here in the US, but in the UK they're not that uncommon. If a jury cannot come to a unanimous decision, a ten to two or eleven to one verdict can be accepted by the judge. And what I mean by not uncommon is that it's estimated that around fifteen percent of all convictions were majority decisions, and that's a recent number from a report by Appeal, which is a wrongful conviction nonprofit in the UK. The benefit of majority decisions is that it stops the jury from being deadlocked by one or two outliers. There are a number of downsides, and maybe one day I'll get around to covering a wrongful conviction from a majority decision, because I got kind of sucked down that rabbit hole while I was researching.

58:06 But to stay on topic today, I want to repeat that I only have one source that says this was a majority decision with a ten to two split. But regardless if it was unanimous or a majority decision, the jury reached a verdict after nearly fifteen hours of deliberation, Robert Brown was found not guilty of murder. He was found guilty of interfering with a coroner's inquest for hiding the body, so he was insane when he killed Joe, but not when he hit her body. When the verdict was read out, there were audible gasps in the courtroom and even the judge looked to be in shock, while Rob smiled at the verdict. Some reports characterize it as a smirk. Joe's family and friends left to go to a private room to grieve what they believe was a huge miscarriage of justice. Rob had convinced the jury, or at least ten of them, that he had killed to Joe, but it was kind of, sort of not his fault in spite of the evidence of premeditation. In a not guilty by reason of insanity case, the defendant could be sent to a hospital, put on supervised release, or just let go. But this case was different because Rob did plead guilty to something. First, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter, so that still stood. This gave the judge the ability

59:37 to send him to prison regardless, and the judge, not the jury, was in charge of his sentence, and it's clear this judge did not by Robert's story. The judge noted that adjustment disorders rarely led to violence, and that Rob's adjustment disorder just so happened to clear up shortly after he killed Joe, convenient He also said he didn't believe that Rob ever planned to bring Joe to the hospital, and that he put the box in the ground for one reason to hide Joe's body. The judge also accepted the testimony about the knife incident that happened in two thousand and seven that showed Rob had been violent in the past, and then he handed down the sentence, and it was Rob's turn to be very surprised and upset.

1:00:26 The maximum sentence for manslaughter if Rob was found guilty at trial, was thirty six years. Because he pleaded guilty and supposedly took responsibility, the maximum sentence was twenty four years for manslaughter and then two years for interfering with the coroner, and so a maximum of twenty six years was what he could get, and that's what the judge gave him. He cited three factors to justify giving Rob the maximum sentence, and those were one, he killed Joe in close proxiity to his children, Two he planned the murder, and three it took multiple days of questioning before he led the police to her body. Twenty six years is a long sentence for someone who pleaded diminished responsibility and had a jury believe it. Joe's family was incredibly relieved at the sentence. Had Rob been convicted of murder, his sentence probably would have been longer, but twenty six years was enough time for the children to grow up without his interference, and he would be an old man when he was released, hopefully old enough to be less of a physical threat to other women. But then the family found out that it wasn't going to be twenty six years behind bars. This wasn't the judge's call, but rather a change in the law. In twenty eleven, England and Wales's past legislation that those convicted of manslaughter would serve

1:01:58 half the time behind bars and the rest on probation. Twenty six years very quickly turned into thirteen. Joe's family would have a right to have some exclusion areas of where rob could live, so they could say he couldn't live near the children, but other than that they could not have any other information about where he was. So for the next thirteen years that he was locked up, Joe's mother and friends became advocates, speaking out against domestic violence, intimate partner violence, and what they could now see was coercive control. They started the Joanna Simpson Foundation to work towards the care of children impacted by domestic violence, and due to their work, both Joe's mother, Diana and her friend Hetty were appointed CBS aka Commander of the Order of the British Empire. This is a very high honor its right under knighthood or dame hood. And in twenty sixteen Diana met the then Duchess of Cornwall and current Queen Camilla. This was the start of Queen Camilla's own advocacy work in regards to domestic violence. After meeting Diana, she recognized what a taboo topic intimate partner violence had been during her lifetime and that there was a cost to not talking about it. Their work over the years was recognized in so many ways, but the dreaded thirteen

1:03:32 year mark was approaching in November of twenty twenty three. This was not parole eligibility, this was an automatic release, so ahead of it, Josa loved One started campaigning to revoke the automatic eligibility for rob and send his case to the Parole Board. The ability to do this came from yet another change in the law. The new law would allow the Justice Secretary to block the automatic release of anyone who posed an ongoing risk to the public. The campaign by Joe's advocates was so well publicized and it was backed by some pretty influential people. It was so high profile that Joe's stepbrother worried that Diana was putting a target on her back and that Rob, if he was released, would seek revenge, and to that, Diana said she hoped he would. She was eighty four and lived a good life, and if Rob killed her, he would be put away forever and no one else would ever be in danger. In October of twenty twenty three, twenty eight days before Rob's scheduled release, just as Secretary Alex Chalk blocked it, requiring Rob to go before the Parle Board. The parole board would have the power to determine when it was safe for him to be released.

1:05:00 Rob of course appealed, and his a legal team argued that the high profile nature of the campaign and the political climate around it was the real reason Alex Chalk blocked the release. There was an actual evidence of Rob's continuing threat to the public, but the problem for Rob at this point was that there was evidence Rob had not taken advantage of their rehabilitative programs offered to him in prison. The Crown's wording was that he persistently refused, and so if Rob wanted to tell a jury that he snapped and killed someone, showing a willingness to learn how to keep that from happening again would have been pretty helpful. It sounds to me, in my opinion, only that Rob realized he was getting an automatic release at thirteen years, so he didn't see the point in putting in the work or in admitting he had an issue.

1:06:00 Rob lost his appeal in February of twenty twenty four, with the justice writing in his decision that there were good grounds for believing Rob posed a high risk to the public and would need a full assessment prior to release. Rob's defense team called this a trial by media, which normally I'm against, but sometimes a little media pressure to correct a wrong that occurred in the courts isn't the worst thing in the world. I know in places that use a jury system and strongly believe in it, that it's not popular to say a jury got it wrong. But I'm going to say that in this case, in my opinion, at least ten people bought the story of a violent liar. Again, that's just my opinion. As of this recording, Robert Brown is still in prison, awaiting the parole process to see if he's going to be released now or if he will have to serve more of his sentence. I will definitely keep you up date, but in the meantime, I've left a link to the Joanna Simpson Foundation where you can find more information on the work they're doing, as well as where to donate. And it's time for July. Patreon and super Cast shout out.

1:07:28 Anyone at any tier on those platforms can get a birthday shout out in their birth month. I wish I could do it for my Apple subscriber supporters as well, but I have no way of even knowing who you are. Apple keeps it a little bit different. So I want to send very happy birthday vibes to Christina Douglas, Julia, Christine, Leah, Regina, and Nassim. I'm so excited to be able to give you your birthday shout outs. I recognize so many of your names. I feel like you've been chatting on Patreon for so long now. If it is summer where you are, I hope you're staying cool. If it's winter, I hope you're staying warm. And regardless, I hope it's full of sunshine, laughter and all of the wonderful things. So for me to you. I want to issh you a very happy birthday.

1:08:23 Thanks for listening. Visit sinspod dot co, slash subscribe for exclusive bonus content and to listen ad free. Remember to like and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and threads at Sins and Survivors. If you're enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review on your podcast platform of choice. You can contact us at questions at Sinsinsurvivors dot com. If you are someone you know as affected by domestic violence or needs support, please reach out to local resources or the National Domestic Violence Hotline. A list of resources is available on our website, Sins and Survivors dot com. Sins and Survivers, a Las Vegas true crime podcast, is research, written and produced by your hosts Sean and John. The information shared in this podcast is accurate at the time of recording. If you have questions, concerns, or corrections, please email us. Links to source material for this episode can be found on our website, Sends and Survivors dot com.

1:09:18 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast creators, hosts, and their guests. All individuals are innocent until proven guilty. This content does not constitute legal advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with legal professionals for guidance.