3rd Slaying Trial May End Saga of Robert Hughes

The battle over the future of Robert David Hughes is revving up again, on two coasts.

In Wilmington, Del., the state’s attorney general is prepared to personally serve as prosecutor in an attempt to prove for the third time that Hughes strangled his wife in 1976.

But in Thousand Oaks, members of a tightly knit Lutheran community are equally ready to continue their campaign to prove the innocence of the former math teacher who moved to their community a year after the murder back East.

Their Committee for Truth and Justice Via Bob Hughes has met almost every week for six years, whispering prayers, plotting strategy and raising funds--hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years--for his defense.

On Friday night, the committee welcomed its hero home, greeting him with tears and embraces at Los Angeles International Airport. After almost three years in a Delaware prison, Hughes was out on bail, his freedom made possible by a Delaware Supreme Court decision overturning, for the second time, his conviction for murder.

Preparing for 3rd Trial

Hughes came home to a reunion with his parents and two sons, and to the meetings of the Committee for Truth and Justice--each Monday evening, in the small library of the Ascension Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thousand Oaks. There they will get ready for the third trial, expected to be held later this year.

The trial will be different in some ways from the earlier ones. Several witnesses have died since Hughes first went before the jury. And there will be new witnesses--including, perhaps, Henry Lee Lucas, the self-proclaimed mass murderer who has claimed to be responsible for hundreds of murders across the United States, among them the one for which Hughes was twice convicted.

But well into its ninth year, the case remains, as it has been from the start, a contest of images: Robert Hughes, portrayed by prosecutors as the self-righteous killer, versus Hughes the God-fearing family man and victim, as portrayed by his friends.

Hughes Was Only Suspect

Almost from the moment Serita Ann Hughes’ body was found strangled outside her Milford, Del., home on Aug. 31, 1976, her husband was the only suspect. He was arrested the next day.

By the standards of modern violence, the slaying of Serita Ann Hughes, 27, was not especially heinous. Nevertheless, in rural Kent County--the middle of Delaware’s three counties--an area of cornfields and a few small manufacturing plants, it was big news. There were only four other murders the entire year in the county, which then had a population of 91,000.

Part of the intrigue of the crime was the seeming normalcy of the Hughes family: They were owners of a modest, $40,000 home sitting on a half-acre lot. Robert was a teacher at a local public junior high school, Serita a registered nurse at Milford Memorial Hospital. They had two sons, then 5 months and 2 1/2 years old. Neighbors could not recall having heard the couple argue.

Went Looking for Wife

Serita Hughes’ body was found on the couple’s eighth wedding anniversary.

The evening before, she had left the hospital after her 3-to-11 p.m. shift in the intensive care ward. Robert Hughes told police he went to sleep by 10 p.m., after putting the children to bed. He said that he woke up about 6 a.m. and realized his wife was not in bed, that he went looking for her and discovered the body in the driveway, in a pool of blood. Blood stained the concrete between her body and the back door of the house.

Hughes said he found no pulse, so he got a blanket from the house, placed it over his wife’s body and called police.

She had been strangled with a cord. There was a large gash on her forehead, apparently caused when she fell and struck the bricks that edged the driveway. She had not been sexually molested.

Her purse lay nearby, its contents strewn about and her wallet missing. But her diamond wedding ring remained on her finger, which police later cited among the evidence that made them suspicious--a real robber would have taken the ring, they said.

Green Beret Case Recalled

Police arrested Hughes Sept. 1, believing he and his wife had argued, he had killed her, staged a robbery scene, then cleaned himself and blood from inside the house during the night.

To police, it was a local version of North Carolina’s infamous Jeffrey MacDonald case, in which a Green Beret physician had claimed that intruders killed his wife and children, only to be convicted of those crimes himself.

The photograph of Hughes that ran in Delaware newspapers showed a bearded man looking blank-faced into the camera, light brown hair tumbling over his forehead. Hughes was described as being about 6-foot-3 and weighing 200 pounds.

The police theory was fueled by Hughes’ replies to questions by Detective Frank G. Melvin over coffee at police headquarters. Melvin asked Hughes what was the “worst” thing that ever occurred in his life, and Hughes replied that almost flunking college was the worst thing, Melvin said.

Why hadn’t the answer been his wife’s murder?

Bogus Test

Police also played a game of sorts with Hughes. They shined a black light on Hughes’ pants, then told him it was a scientific test that could show blood. In reality, it was an exercise to see how he would respond.

Police later testified that Hughes said whatever blood the black light found was probably from a menstruating dog he had recently petted. In the eyes of police, it was an unnecessary explanation for imaginary blood. (Five years later, the Delaware Supreme Court, although not outlawing the black-light testing, called its use “trickery.”)

There were some real tests, too: chemical spraying inside the house to find invisible bloodstains; tests of the blanket over the victim’s body, and a lie detector test for Hughes, which the examiner said was ineffective because Hughes was too emotional.

Hughes spent eight days in custody, awaiting indictment. Then he was released.

There was not enough evidence to charge Hughes with murder, officials said. Not only was there no direct evidence--a witness, for instance--but police also did not have a motive. Later, all records of the arrest were expunged.

Tried to Prove Innocence

The case might never have been heard from again had Hughes set his mind to sinking back into an anonymous routine. But the release clearly did not satisfy him. Angry at his treatment by police, he set out to prove his innocence.

Returning to his teaching job, Hughes used his spare time to travel across country to get evidence in his behalf. There was a tape-recorded session with a hypnotist in Beverly Hills in which he reenacted the morning he found his wife dead. And he took another lie detector test in Michigan, a move that would come back to haunt him.

In May, 1977, Hughes left Delaware. He said he wanted to start a new life, to get away from flashbacks of the murder scene he said he experienced every time he pulled into his driveway.

He moved with the boys--Chad, the older, and Brock--to Thousand Oaks, where he bought a house after finding a teaching job at Ascension Evangelical Lutheran Church school. Soon after, Hughes’ parents, Clarence and Florence, followed him to Ventura County to help care for their grandchildren, for whom they later became legal guardians.

Lutheran Ties

It was not surprising that the Hugheses found themselves drawn into the Lutheran community in Thousand Oaks. There long has been a large, well-organized Lutheran population--with eight churches--mainly because of Cal Lutheran College, on the city’s north side. Hughes, a Methodist before moving west, said that, for the first time in his life, a church made him feel like a part of a family.

Church members, in turn, said Hughes excelled as an algebra teacher and motivator of children. They were to provide his main support when his case flared up again, when sheriff’s deputies came to get him at the school.

The murder of Serita Hughes had remained classified as an active police case, but that was routine with major unsolved crimes. In fact, the case was at a dead end until a chance event in Chicago prompted police to reopen their files.

In mid-1978, a Delaware state policeman was in Chicago attending a seminar on the use of lie detectors. Seminar participants were given copies of test results from what were described by the instructor as confessed criminals. The police officer recognized the name on one of the forms. It was the test Hughes had taken on his own initiative more than a year earlier.

Test Withheld

To this day, the test has not been made public. The seminar organizer, realizing he had made a mistake sharing a confidential report, refused to turn it over to the Delaware officer. The organizer also signed an affidavit asserting that Hughes had not, in fact, confessed to the crime.

But the incident breathed life into the Hughes case in Delaware. A new investigator took charge, and in December, 1978, the state attorney general’s office took the case before a grand jury. Hughes was indicted for murder.

After his arrest at school by Ventura County sheriff’s deputies, Hughes was returned to Delaware, where he pleaded not guilty. He was released on $100,000 bail, raised through feverish efforts of his parents and friends from Thousand Oaks.

For much of the next five years, Hughes’ life revolved around the Dover, Del., courtroom of Superior Court Judge George R. Wright Jr.

‘Bulldog’ of a Lawyer

The prosecutor was Deputy Atty. Gen. Charles M. Oberly III, a self-described “bulldog” of a lawyer. It was, he readily acknowledged, a circumstantial case based on the very evidence police had from the start.

“They all add up together,” Oberly said of the pieces.

The prosecution’s strategy revolved around contradicting the version of events Hughes had given police at the time of the murder.

Probably the strongest testimony came from a neighbor, who said he heard loud, angry voices coming from the direction of the Hughes home. The prosecutor asked how it could be that the neighbor, living 160 feet away, had heard the noise but that Hughes, sleeping 35 feet from the murder scene, did not hear anything.

The jury also heard a contest of expert witnesses.

‘Galileo of Blood’

The prosecution called Herbert L. MacDonell, an expert on bloodstains who described himself to a Delaware newspaper as the “Isaac Newton of ballistics, the Magellan of fingerprints and the Galileo of blood.”

MacDonell testified that the scene around Serita Hughes’ body had been staged to make it appear that robbery was the motive. MacDonell said the quilt that Hughes said he placed on his wife’s body in the morning actually was placed over her about midnight--the time both sides agreed she was murdered.

Several witnesses debated the significance of a police statement that dew was found on the quilt. One prosecution witness, a former television weatherman and Drexel University professor, said there could not have been dew on the quilt if it was placed on the body after 6 a.m.

But a defense expert testified that his bloodstain tests on the blanket indicated it was draped over the body six hours after death, supporting Hughes’ story. And the defense called its own meteorologist, who testified that police must have been mistaken because there was no dew that night.

‘Luminol’ Debate

There was considerable debate, also, over the chemical “luminol” test, used to detect blood by giving off a fluorescent glow. The prosecution said it found traces of blood on Robert Hughes’ left hand; on the kitchen floor, walls, sink and telephone; on doorknobs, and on a path leading from the dining room to the back door.

Under cross-examination, the test’s developer testified that there were limitations to its validity. He said luminol will react to the blood of any warm-blooded animal, not just humans. It also might react to certain soaps and metals, such as the copper solder used on a ring on Hughes’ left hand.

“So they spray the kitchen and find evidence of blood,” one of Hughes’ attorneys, Gerald Street, said later in an interview. “Well, good Lord. They found it on the phone. Now what woman doesn’t prepare chicken or hamburgers and when the phone rings, half wipe her hands on her apron and pick up the phone?”

The defense contended that if some blood drops were human blood, they may have come from Serita, who was experiencing some bleeding problems stemming from a tubal ligation four months before her death; it suggested that blood on Robert Hughes’ hand may have come from intercourse with his wife two nights earlier.

Defense attorneys did not call Hughes to the witness stand. The trial lasted six weeks. The jury deliberated for just under seven hours before finding Hughes guilty of first-degree murder. Judge Wright imposed a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Hughes spent 20 months in prison while an appeal of the conviction was made to the Delaware Supreme Court. The appeal was argued by Samuel Dash, the former Senate Watergate Committee counsel.

Funds for Hughes’ legal fees were then being raised by what has come to be called the Committee for Truth and Justice Via Bob Hughes. The group held fund-raising dinners and sent out appeals to Lutheran groups around the country.

Letter From Hughes

The committee, during this time, distributed a letter Hughes had written in prison. He thanked his supporters, then spoke mostly about religion and the help he received from a prison chaplain:

“He was truly a miracle sent by God during these despairing moments,” Hughes wrote. “He told me . . . I could either accept the situation and join the rowdy group of prisoners or I could search for a meaning of it all.

“I guess I was never truly aware of God’s promises in the manner by which He used different situations and people for a purpose.”

Through such mailings, the committee eventually raised about $500,000 from 1,400 people and groups, half of the funds in contributions, half as loans.

On June 23, 1981, the Delaware Supreme Court overturned the conviction, writing that prosecutors had made comments to the jury that were “prejudicial and inexcusable . . . improper” and “erroneous.”

Remarks Criticized

One of the prosecutors, for instance, told the jury, “We have proved blood on his hands through his own mouth.” The court said the remarks “clearly misstated the evidence” because there was no proof the blood was connected to the murder.

When Hughes returned to California, there were banners and 200 people waiting for him at the airport, including a bus load of former students. “I love you all,” he told the crowd.

With the new trial coming up, there was no time to return to teaching. Hughes took a job as a car salesman and also made several speeches describing his experiences to help his committee.

The second trial was a replay of the first, with one exception. Hughes testified in his own defense this time.

On Stand for 3 Days

He was on the witness stand for three days. Accounts at the time described him as a calm witness assured of his story, but one who grew perturbed by Oberly’s questions, which went over the same points many times.

Hughes had to explain why, six years earlier, he had told police he went to bed between 9:30 and 10 p.m. the night of the murder. The prosecution had contradicted his statement through the testimony of a clerk at a market not far from the Hughes home, who said Hughes bought some groceries about 10:30 p.m.

Hughes testified that he forgot about the “short” trip when talking to police because of the emotional strain he was under when questioned. He corrected himself, saying he was in bed by 11 p.m.

Hughes also tried to explain how he could have slept through the loud noises described by his neighbor. He said he was tired from a trip to the beach with his two boys the day before the murder. He normally slept very soundly, he said, “especially on summer days, after having the kids all day, especially if we go to the beach.”

Distortion Alleged

And Hughes said police distorted his statement that the worst experience in his life was almost flunking college. After Detective Melvin asked his question, Hughes said, he then asked Melvin, “You do mean other than this tragedy this morning?” Hughes said the officer replied “yes.”

Hughes’ testimony did not change the outcome of the case. This time the jury deliberated for only four hours before finding him guilty on July 21, 1982. Again, Judge Wright meted out a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole.

At the Delaware Correctional Center in Smyrna, Hughes was put to work as a teacher. There were classes for inmates trying to get general education certificates, and a religion class.

‘Like a Roller Coaster’

Hughes spent 4 1/2 years in the prison during the two stretches following his convictions.

“Emotionally, the way the system keeps you up and down, it’s like a roller coaster,” he said earlier this month, speaking in a bare, institutional-green prison interview room. “This motion goes in, or you have to wait 10 days for this and 15 days for this and it starts wearing on your patience. . . . I feel they have taken away part of my life unjustly.”

Hughes said that over the years he had three times been offered plea bargains under a provision of Delaware law known as the “Robinson plea.” He would acknowledge there was enough evidence to convict him, but not actually plead guilty. In return, he would receive a shorter sentence.

He said he had refused each offer. “I believed the jury system would work,” he said. “And I was not about to admit to something that I didn’t do.”

The state’s top court overturned Hughes’ second conviction based on evidence that four jurors and two alternates knew of his first conviction, and that three others had heard about the second lie-detector test Hughes had taken--information not admissible in court.

The court ordered that the third trial be held in New Castle County, in the state’s northern end, and recommended that questioning of prospective jurors be more thorough.

The prosecutor is likely to be the same one as at the earlier trials, but this time his title will be Atty. Gen. Oberly. Oberly had announced his candidacy for the state’s top law-enforcement job before the second Hughes trial, and 3 1/2 months after the verdict he won the office by less than a percentage point over the incumbent. Oberly said there are no plans for a possible plea bargain to resolve the case.

Oberly is well aware of the campaigns on Hughes’ behalf. Hughes’ supporters, he said, are “well-motivated,” but “I think it is a little hard for them to understand the facts of the case from 3,000 miles away.”

Last Monday, eight members of the Committee for Truth and Justice sat in a semicircle at the Thousand Oaks church library, their last meeting before Hughes’ return home.

Fund-Raising Problems

The committee figured it owes $140,000, raising the possibility that Hughes will have to seek a public defender to represent him at the third trial, committee members said. “Frankly,” said member Russ Laporte, “there’s a lot of people who are tired of hearing about Bob Hughes.”

But Lisa Jensen, a Dover, Del., resident, put up $80,000 of equity from her family’s home to help Hughes post $100,000 bail. And the committee’s faith in its cause seems little shaken.

“He was a Christian man,” Fern Halugrud said. “He didn’t seem to be a man who was capable of committing a crime of passion.”

Hughes’ father was at the meeting, as he usually is. Clarence Hughes, 68, has all the legal papers and two file cabinets full of other papers on the case. “I feel I was inspired by God to do this,” he said.

‘Did You Kill Her?’

He said that in a conversation with his son in 1976, “I asked him point-blank, ‘Did you kill her?’ And he replied, ‘How could you ask such a question?’ I knew then that Bob did not kill his wife.”

One of the committee’s projects is helping pay for expert witnesses for the new trial. Three defense witnesses have died since the earlier proceedings, including a bloodstain expert. Also dead is a priest who spoke with Hughes soon after the slaying. The priest testified that Hughes was distraught, countering prosecution assertions that Hughes seemed unemotional about his wife’s death.

But the Committee for Truth and Justice also was excited about a potential new witness--one who says he murdered Serita Hughes.

That Henry Lee Lucas, 48, confessed to the crime was not startling. Lucas, who is being held in a Texas jail, at times has claimed responsibility for as many as 600 murders across the country, including a series in California. But at other times Lucas has that insisted he killed only three people--his mother and two women acquaintances.

Lucas Interviewed

Two weeks ago, defense attorney Street went to Texas to conduct a four-hour, videotaped prison interview with Lucas, in which Lucas allegedly confessed to burglarizing the Hughes home and witnessing his friend, Otis Toole, murder Serita Hughes.

Street said Lucas drew diagrams of the neighborhood surrounding the Hughes house and of the interior of the house. “He gets a lot of details correct,” Street said. “He also gets some details incorrect. He gets far more details correct, two-to-one, than he does incorrect.”

Oberly, who was sent a copy of the videotape, dismissed the interview with Lucas as “the biggest insult I think we ever listened to.” The confession was coached by Street, he said.

But even if Lucas was not the most reliable of personalities, he was a source of hope in the Thousand Oaks church library.

‘In the Driver Seat’

“That map was so detailed,” said Pat Cameron, a member of the committee. “There’s no way he could have done that out of his head.”

Said Harvey Halugrud, “We’re in the driver seat now.”

When Robert Hughes stepped off the airplane Friday, there were 20 people greeting him and a 12-foot banner saying “Welcome Dad” at the airport gate. Hughes’ father said they wanted the return to be more sedate than the last one.

Hughes has said he simply wants to find a job and settle into a normal life as he waits for the third trial, expected to begin in the fall.

“I just trust in the good Lord that we’re finally coming to the end of it,” he said.