Murder in Massachusetts

Amanda Comes Clean?

It just so happened that on January 7, 2005, two days before Neil was murdered, a police officer had pulled him over and had his vehicle towed after he found out Neil had no insurance and no registration on it. As shocking as this was to Neil, a routine traffic stop had opened up a Pandora's Box, police believed, of mounting financial debt. Having found out then that Patricia had failed to pay those bills, it wasn't such a stretch to think Neil went home that night and laid into her good, demanding answers, probably asking to look at the household finances more closely. And once Patricia realized Neil had found out about her not paying those bills, it was just a matter of time before she knew damn well Neil would uncover the fact that she hadn't paid any of the bills.

"Neil was going to find out that you had disrespected him," David Capeless later said to Patricia while she was on the witness stand, "and that would have enraged him, wouldn't it, Mrs. Olsen?"

Having learned of his wife's true nature, would Neil have perhaps divorced her and left her with nothing?

David Capeless thought it was a possibility.

"You're wrong, Mr. Capeless," Patricia argued back, crying, trying to deter Capeless's obvious finger-pointing. "You're completely wrong, sir!"

By February 2, 2005, law enforcement believed they had enough evidence to arrest Patricia.

What specifically?

At 12:05 that afternoon, police had caught up with Amanda Robinson once again and confronted her with the notion that she knew a hell of a lot more than she had admitted in her original statement. So they brought her into the New Scotland, New York, state police barracks and asked her if she was willing to add anything else to that statement.

After discussing it with her boyfriend, Amanda told police she didn't need a lawyer. So she began: "I want to [talk] about my mother's involvement in Neil Olsen's death."

Amanda claimed Patricia's obsession with having Neil murdered began as far back as a few years after she started high school.

"Life would be so much better without him," Amanda claimed Patricia had said to her. She was "evasive" at first, Amanda added, but soon just came out with it.

"Is there someone you know that would kill him?" Amanda said Patricia asked her one day. "I'll pay them."

Amanda furthered explained Patricia's desire to have Neil killed as "aggressive." As the years moved forward, Patricia never let up. She would constantly bring it up to Amanda and "make [her] feel bad about [her] life" with Neil, so Amanda would feel comfortable about helping her "make all of her troubles"—Neil—"go away."

Amanda also claimed that she "ran into Christopher" on the day he was in Wal-Mart purchasing the gun he used in the murder. "He told me that my mom gave him the money to buy it."

This was odd, because Christopher couldn't recall having said that to Amanda.

During the last part of her interview, Amanda went into piercing detail about Patricia's after-the-murder plan, describing exactly how she told Amanda and Christopher they could "get away" with the crime. "You're not going to get away with this," Amanda told her mother after police started asking questions the second day after Neil's murder.

"Yes we are as long as we stick together it will just come back to your brother. We should tell the police that Chris wasn't there... " But after she thought about it, Patricia added, "They're going to catch him. But hell, it wouldn't be that bad a thing, because he would have a place to live. Do you think I did the right thing?"

"I'm a terrible liar, mother."

"Come on, you used to put on plays in high school."

"She thought it was a big f—king joke," Amanda admitted later. "She'd fake crying and call Fred [Neil's brother], and I'd look at her [while she was on the phone] and then she'd f—king turn around and smile at me."