Engulfing flames caused physical and mental scars on a young boy, the burns trespassing his body in the same way its initiator did. He ran from the woods, the fishing line once formerly bounding him to a tree melting away. Robbie Middleton made it from the edge of the woods to a nearby street where he collapsed right in front of his neighbors and parents. The child had been intentionally set on fire.
It was the day of his eighth birthday.
June 28, 1998 brought trauma to the entire Middleton family. Looking to go to a friend’s house and invite him over for a sleepover, the young boy left his own home and was forcefully taken to a nearby trail. Someone tied him to a tree, dumped gasoline on him and set Middleton ablaze. Everyone quickly knew who the perpetrator was. Still, he did not go to jail, only facing a short period of detainment by police.
Middleton survived the at*tack with burns to 99% of his body. Residents of Splendora, Texas witnessed the child fight valiantly, receiving over 150 surgeries with skin grafts everywhere but the soles of his feet, according to Houston Chronicle.
Neighbor Don Collins, 13, had attempted to murder him, but 17 years and an inevitable de*ath passed before justice for the victim came to fruition.
Understandably, the ordeal was hard to process for Middleton and his family. The targeted child told police that Collins was responsible but did not disclose a tangible motive. It was not until later in life that the grim truth would be revealed. Prosecutors could not effectively secure a conviction, citing a lack of evidence. Collins, charged and then released, escaped to torture others. He became a serial molester.
Meanwhile, Middleton persevered. Harvey Rice of the website Chron wrote about how he became a local champion for other burn victims, lobbying for Shriners Hospitals for Children in Galveston to remain open after Hurricane Ike ravaged the building in 2008. He wanted to be a wildlife rehabilitator in the future, and made it to his junior year of high school while fighting an uphill battle with the ramifications from his assault. Middleton developed a rare form of skin cancer from the countless grafts situated across his body, but his spirit never wavered.
After years of physical therapy and relentless tenacity, time began to catch up with the man, who was now 20. Craig Sico, the family attorney, helped Middleton record a sworn video deposition while the disease ran its course. On his dea*thbed in April 2011, he once again named Collins as the one responsible for the deliberate, fiery onslaught. The taped statement further revealed that Collins tried to k*ill Middleton in order to silence the younger boy for a rape two weeks earlier at the exact same location. He had been too afraid to tell his mother the truth, even though he reportedly confessed to his older sister two years before filming the 27-minute video. As a testament to his bravery, not only did the victim publicly recount the incident, but he said that Collins also raped his own cousin, fitting the pattern of a repeat offender. 17 days later, Middleton passed away, the dea*th ruled a hom*icide from his lifelong complications. The family launched a civil suit, pleading for justice.
Collins’ reputation and cr*iminal record supported the accusation.
Collins molested multiple children over the years. He was known as a local bully who violently stomped kittens to d*eath without any remorse. Others noted that he bragged about what happened to Middleton as a way of intimidating them into submission. In 2001, at age 16, he was jailed for raping yet another boy; this was eventually grouped in with varying other charges such as refusing to register as a sex offender twice, resisting arrest and counts of theft. While imprisoned during the events of the civil trial, the assailant became free in September 2011.
NBC reported that a jury came to the conclusion to award the family a symbolic personal injury suit which outnumbered any other amount in American history. The court bestowed a massive $150 billion to the family in hopes the monetary value would incite a cr*iminal trial. They were supposed to attain $370 million in actual damages from Collins, but recognized that they never intended to see any of the money because the assailant clearly did not have it. The statement was their central focus and it became bigger than any compensation could provide. With renewed interest and a cold case unit assigned to Middleton’s prolonged murder, everyone hoped for a successful prosecution.
Investigators finally arrested Collins, thus beginning his cr*iminal litigation. Due to the media frenzy, the case relocated to Galveston from Montgomery. Some of the witnesses included two other victims of the sexually violent man: a boy, 8 at the time, and a girl, 6 at the time. Collins told the male child that if he reported the c*rime, he’d be burned just like Robbie. In the years since, the rest of his targets grew to adulthood, yet were still haunted by their respective molestations. Additional testimony during the trial emerged that an older person had been present with Collins at the scene of the fire, but no identity has ever been found for that individual who may have also been involved.
When the video confession played in the courtroom, Collins showed no emotion. According to USA Today, he read the newspaper as Middleton emotionally described what had happened to him, the accused’s back turned.
The jury returned with a verdict of capital murder on Feb. 10, 2015. Since Collins was a minor during the onslaught, the prosecution agreed on a maximum sentence of 40 years, ultimately deciding with the courts on that number in order to treat the ki*ller as an adult rather than as a child who would be afforded extra protections for their age.
Collins’ defense team plans to launch appeals based on the legality of treating him as an adult rather than a minor, but Colleen Middleton, Robbie’s mother, is grateful for the win. She keeps her son’s ashes in an urn in the living room, where she hopes to one day be buried with him, again reunited in their final resting place. To Houston Chronicle’s Cindy Horswell, she said:
“I’m sick and tired of being sad all the time. This case has taken enough of my life.”
The burn center where Middleton sought a bulk of his treatment prominently features a photograph of him on a plaque in the lobby. Likewise, the town of Galveston declared his birthday to be a holiday. What should have been the happiest celebration for him was seemingly shattered by the horror of the c*rime, but the boy mostly kept his head high. In his last few weeks alive, he worried about going to hell for the pain inflicted on him that summer day despite none of it being his fault. For Middleton, a child with dreams, he was thrown directly into the path of the inferno. As the smoke cleared, the embers cooling, fate delivered Collins the proper moral retribution. Whether the adult accompanying him will ever be revealed is only up to the very man who started the fire.
