Robin Stone started her senior year at Cambridge High School in Cambridge, Ohio on August 27, 1991. The 17-year-old was participating in a work-study program, so she only had to go to school for half a day; after getting out of class she visited with some friends and then went home. Around 3:00 pm, she and her mother walked to a nearby elementary school to pick up Robin’s younger sister; the three of them then returned home together.
Shortly after arriving at the house, the phone rang. Robin answered and told the person on the other end of the line that she would be right there; she then told her mother that she was going over to her best friend’s house to do math homework with her. Her mother, Judy Stevens, reminded her that she needed to be home by 6:00 pm for dinner, and Robin said she would definitely be back by then. She hurried out the front door and drove off in her 1980 Ford Granada. She would never make it back home.
6:00 pm came and went without any word from Robin. At first, her mother was slightly annoyed and assumed the teenager had lost track of time. She placed a call to Jody, her daughter’s best friend, and was surprised to learn that Robin hadn’t been there at all that afternoon. Jody also denied calling the house earlier that day; it appeared that Robin had lied to her mother about who had called and where she was going.
Judy began calling all of Robin’s friends, but none of them had seen her since she left school earlier that afternoon. Judy was debating whether or not she should call the police when the phone rang at 8:30 pm. It was the Guernsey County Sheriff’s Department; they had found Robin’s car seemingly abandoned near a vacant house located near the Cambridge/Westland Township border. There was no sign of Robin.
Judy reported her daughter missing; she was certain that something horrible had happened to Robin. Although police found nothing unusual in or around Robin’s car, her family noticed one detail that investigators had overlooked: Robin usually had a pair of fuzzy dice hanging from her rearview mirror; when the car was found, the string holding the dice together was broken and the dice had been thrown into the back seat.
Robin’s family was frantic with worry and desperate to find her, especially as she was seven months pregnant when she disappeared. She had only expected to be gone from the house for a short time period, and didn’t have any of her prenatal medication with her when she went missing. Her family knew that they needed to find her quickly to ensure that both she and her unborn child were healthy.
As weeks went by without any sign of Robin, her family grew increasingly desperate to find her. Detectives interviewed those closest to Robin, but her friends were unable to provide any information about her whereabouts. Lee Savage, who had been Robin’s boyfriend at the time of her disappearance, told investigators that he wasn’t the father of her unborn child and he had no idea where she might have gone. She had not given any indications that she had been unhappy or preparing to run away, and none of her friends or family members believed that she would have voluntarily walked away from her life.
On December 28, 1991, four months after Robin vanished, three hunters from Zanesville stumbled across skeletal remains near a private lake in Westland Township, Ohio. As soon as they realized that the bones were human, they called the police. The location was only about a mile away from where Robin’s car had been found, and detectives immediately assumed that Robin had been found.
Although they would need to use dental records before they could be completely certain, as soon as investigators started processing the scene they believed they had uncovered Robin and her unborn child. The skeletal remains of a female and her fetus were easily recognizable, and Robin was the only pregnant female missing from the area. Tattered shreds of clothing found with the remains also matched the clothing Robin had been wearing when she was last seen. They soon confirmed to the media that Robin and her unborn child had been found.
Robin’s family was heartbroken when they learned that she was dead; they were particularly bothered by the fact that she and her baby had been so close to home the entire time and no one had known. Worse, they were told that they would have to wait before they could lay Robin and her baby to rest. Their skeletal remains were held as evidence while detectives tried to determine who had ki*lled them.
The medical examiner was unable to determine an exact cause of dea*th. Her skull had no noticeable deformities, and none of her bones showed marks from a knife or bullet. It is likely that she was strangled to dea*th; the official cause of dea*th was listed as homicide.
Detectives believed that determining the father of Robin’s child would be a key factor in solving the murd*er, but they immediately hit a brick wall. DNA technology was in its infancy, and Robin had been very open about the fact that she been dating quite a few different guys around the time she got pregnant. They turned to her diary to try and understand more about what had been going on in her life.
Robin’s longest relationship had been with Lee Savage, and it was clear from her diary that she was in love with him. They had started dating in January 1991; Lee broke up with her several times during the course of their relationship, but Robin was always able to win him back. She believed that he was the father of her child, and she wrote often about how she hoped he would be a part of the baby’s life. Lee, however, always denied being the father and detectives knew it was possible he was right. Robin wrote about several other men she had been with around the same time; without DNA evidence, proving paternity was impossible. Lee had even told one person that he believed his own father could be responsible for getting Robin pregnant; Robin’s very detailed diary seems to dispute this.
Despite the fact that they couldn’t prove he was the father of the baby, Lee was high up on the list of suspects developed by detectives. Robin’s body had been found near Luburgh Lake, a place she had mentioned several times in her diary as somewhere she would go with Lee. It was only about a half mile from Lee’s home and would have been very familiar to him.
Lee’s father, Jack Savage, was also looked at as a potential suspect. He had hated Robin and made it clear that he didn’t want his son dating her. In his eyes, Robin came from a lower-class family and wasn’t good enough for his son. He insisted that Robin had already been four months pregnant when she started dating Lee — something that was clearly untrue — and he was known around town for having an explosive temper. When the mother of one of Robin’s friend’s called Jack the night Robin disappeared, he told her that he hoped that Robin was dead and referred to her as welfare trash.
Despite the circumstantial evidence pointing to Lee and Jack Savage, there was no physical evidence connecting them to the crime. Unable to come up with enough evidence to file charges against anyone, the investigation into Robin’s de*ath soon stalled and then went cold. It would remain that way for more than two decades.
In 2002, the Guernsey County Sheriff’s Department decided that it was time for Robin to be laid to rest, and they released her remains to her family. More than 11 years after she died, Robin’s family was finally able to hold a funeral for her.
Robin’s case got a fresh look in 2014, when the television show “Cold Justice” aired an episode featuring it. Investigators also spoke with several of Lee’s former girlfriends and learned that he had a violent streak; one noted that he broke her tailbone when he pushed her out of a door. He also choked one woman during sex; she was too frightened of him to press charges. Another ex said that he had always had a bad temper and could be very violent; after they divorced, he told her that she was lucky he didn’t do to her what he had done to “that other girl”, presumably Robin.
DNA testing was finally completed on Robin’s child and it was determined that Lee Savage was the father. Robin had been right. When confronted with this information by detectives, Lee backpedaled on his earlier statements and admitted that he had sex with Robin, but still insisted that he had nothing to do with the mu*rder of Robin.
Despite the new evidence that came to light in 2014, there have never been any charges filed in Robin’s mu*rder.
Robin Stone was just 17 years old when she and her unborn baby were mur*dered in 1991. She was an extremely intelligent teenager who hoped to become a veterinarian. She came from a close-knit family that has suffered deeply from her loss and they pray that Robin’s k*iller will one day soon be brought to justice. If you have any information about Robin’s murd*er, please contact the Guernsey County Sheriff’s Department at 740–439–4455.
