Robin Lee Row was sentenced to death in Idaho for the arson killing of her husband and two school-aged children in Boise in 1992. She had a long history of criminal activity and suspicious deaths of family members. Row was born as Robin Cornellier in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on September 12, 1957. Her parents were said to have a dysfunctional relationship and fought with each other, leading to her father being arrested for domestic violence and they divorced when she was in grade school. Robin's father, whom she was close to, was in jail most of her teenage years.
She later claimed after her arrest that her grandfather raped her at age 12 and they had regular sex until she got pregnant at about 14 and her mother took her to New York for an abortion, which was still illegal in New Hampshire (two years before Roe v. Wade was decided). Row supposedly stole $42 from a neighbor while doing chores at her house and at 15 her mother had her committed to the State Industrial School for six months after juvenile authorities declared her "uncontrollable" for her frequent truancy and running away. A psychiatric report called her a habitual liar and an expert at inventing falsehoods.She had her first consenting sexual relationship at 15 when she was living with her cousin's family as a live-in babysitter and got impregnated by a 17 year old neighbor boy. Her son Keith was born June 6, 1974. She was impregnated a second time by a man she said was named Bill White, but he deserted her after learning that she was pregnant and she never saw him again. Robin turned 18 in September 1975 and moved with her infant son to her own apartment. Her daughter Kristina was born October 14. Robin attended college classes and left the children to be babysat by her grandmother. Following Kristina's birth, she had her first serious romantic relationship with a 23 year old man named Johnny Potter, who babysat the children.In late summer 1976, she met her first husband Robert Hardman, who had once been charged in New Hampshire with arson. The two were involved in a vehicle arson not long after they met. A year later, they were living in a Portsmouth apartment together when a fire started in the apartment below theirs, forcing them to move in with her mother.
Kristina died at her grandmother's house at 15 months old on January 31, 1977. There was no obvious cause of death and the medical examiner wrote the catch-all phrase "sudden infant death syndrome" on the death certificate. Robin's sister Tammy believed she killed her but the former told varying stories over the years about Kristina's health and death. She once claimed Kristina was "in poor health, possibly blind" and that her health steadily declined over a period of months until her death. To her sister-in-law she said "I'm glad she's dead. She's in a better place now." After her arrest in 1992, she claimed Kristina was an unwanted child and a sickly one too, but she didn't mistreat her.Robin and Bob Hardman married on March 19 and moved to North Carolina. Within a few months of moving to her new home, she plead guilty to obtaining property by false pretenses and was sentenced to four years in prison, but only served seven months and was paroled August 19, 1978. Hardman took care of Keith while his mother was incarcerated and then left him at her mother's home in New Hampshire. Robin went back to live with Hardman after getting out. One evening she brought him a case of beer and gave him the entire case to drink, which was out of character for her. Later that night Hardman awoke to find the bedroom wall on fire. Robin wasn't in the room but was sleeping with Keith on the sofa. Hardman found that his can of gunpowder started the fire and it was unsealed although he normally kept it sealed. He became convinced Robin wanted to kill him to collect his $20,000 life insurance policy.
The couple separated in the spring of 1979 and went back to New Hampshire. They moved again in January 1980, this time to Big Bar, California. That spring, Row bought $14,000 life insurance policies for herself and Keith with a double indemnity clause in case of accidental death. On June 19, six year old Keith died in his bed in a house fire believed caused by clothing placed on top of an electric heater in his bedroom. Keith was burned beyond recognition and no cause of death could be determined. Robin insisted she was on welfare and had no insurance on Keith, but she nonetheless collected a $28,000 payout. Over the years she told many varying stories about her son's death, including that she was badly burned trying to save him and was hospitalized for three weeks.She claimed a friend who fled an abusive husband went to live with her and placed locks on the inside of Keith's bedroom door in case her husband found her and tried to break in, but Keith couldn't reach the locks and got trapped in the bedroom and couldn't get out when the fire started. Arson investigators reported that Robin ran to get help from a neighbor when the fire started and claimed Keith was in the bathroom when he was really in the bedroom, and that they found the electric heater set to high. It seemed inexplicable that anyone would need to use a heater in the middle of June and detectives later felt sure Robin had intentionally started the fire. She also made a suicide attempt not long after his death.
Robin began a relationship with a man named David Grossman that lasted about six months from August 1980 until the following winter. She divorced Hardeman and bought a new Oldsmobile Toronado with the money from Keith's insurance payout. On July 14, 1981 she reported that her car was stolen and set on fire. Robin had three car keys and claimed a thief took one of them, but she nonetheless had three with her. The insurance company paid $5,000 to repair damage to the Oldsmobile, but she refused to take a polygraph exam concerning the damage on the grounds that she was pregnant and it would mess up the results of the test. Robin then bought a mobile home for a $15,000 down payment and moved it to Five Cent Gulch Mobile Home Park. Her third child, Joshua, was born December 6 and she claimed David Grossman was the father. He didn't believe it, although he paid child support from 1983.Social workers were worried about the baby's well-being given that two previous children of hers had died mysteriously and she initially left him at the hospital, unsure if she wanted to keep him. She never seemed to love Joshua and her sister Tammy noted that she was absent of any motherly instinct. During this time, Robin was working as a bookkeeper and over a two month period in late 1981 she stole $5,362 from her employer Stitch Witchery, a sewing supplies store. She was caught and plead guilty to grand larceny. Robin told the owner of the sewing store that she needed the money to pay for cancer treatment, although she was perfectly healthy. On March 24, 1982, she was sentenced to three years in prison, but the judge suspended all but nine months of it. During this time she also had a relationship with a man named Roy Williams who kept an eye on Joshua after others expressed concern over his well-being.
Robin also took out $10,000 life insurance policies for herself, Joshua, and Tammy, who was then living with her. She claimed it was to help pay for Tammy's college education, but the latter was outraged and believed Robin was trying to kill her. Tammy said that for as long she could remember, her sister was a habitual liar, "the black sheep of the family", and that they always knew she killed Keith but couldn't prove it. A pre-sentencing report dated 6/3/82 claimed that Robin admitted she was a habitual liar, couldn't help herself, and did not even know why she did it. The report added that she did not show any remorse. The owner of Stitch Witchery, while still wanting back the money Robin stole, admitted that she had issues with lying and that a medical exam might be helpful in determining the cause of her condition. While she was in jail, Joshua was cared for by his godmother Betty Wines and made a ward of the state. A report from the Trinity County welfare bureau found that Joshua was healthy and properly cared for, but given his mother's issues it was inadvisable to give him back to her unless she underwent extensive psychiatric evaluation.Psychiatric evaluations of Robin found no evidence of mental dysfunction or psychosis, although she became frustrated easily and could resort to socially unacceptable means of dealing with her problems, and she seemed unlikely to improve. Joshua was returned to his mother's custody on December 13. Robin gave birth to her fourth child, Tabatha, on October 17, 1983 and claimed the father to be a man named Leslie Gorm despite no proof of this being the case.
In 1986, she spent 12 days in jail for passing bad checks. Around the same time, Robin began stealing checks from her neighbor Mary Smith by forging Smith's signature on them. Several witnesses saw her passing the checks and she wrote her driver's license number on one of them. All of the checks were cashed at bingo parlors. Smith reported the missing checks to police and shortly afterward, her dog, which was known to bark a lot, also disappeared--it was found a few miles away. One evening Smith came home from a bingo game, heard a bang, and discovered the middle bedroom of her trailer was on fire, which was started under a cabinet where they kept toys. Investigators couldn't find any obvious cause of the blaze. Smith believed Robin set it but couldn't prove it.Robin was arrested for forgery on March 19, 1987 and plead guilty. Investigators believed she had a gambling addiction which she supported by theft. They noted that although she had been in jail several times over the years, she was not deterred and continued to depict herself as the victim. The report said that only a lengthy prison sentence rather than a few weeks or months in local jail would deter her. However, Robin wasn't going to wait around for that. When her sentencing hearing was due, she skipped town and took her children to Boise, Idaho. There she spent a few days at a women's shelter and asked for help in finding housing. They moved into an apartment in the Idaho capital in October.
Robin found work with the Boise YWCA the following February as a program coordinator for a day shelter for homeless women and children, and later managd the YWCA bingo program. She met Randy Row, two months younger than her, and they got married June 11, 1988. The Rows lived in a two story duplex on Seneca Drive in Boise. Robin got a hysterectomy in August. In December, a fire broke out at the YWCA while she was working there, which she claimed destroyed Christmas presents she was storing. The presents later turned up and she changed the subject when her sister-in-law asked her about notifying the insurance company that they'd been found. She purchased three insurance policies for the entire family during 1989 and an additional policy in July 1991. Three of the four policies had a double indemnity clause.Randy was in a motorcycle accident in October 1989 and spent four months in a coma. He came to the following February and was able to perform basic functions, but had problems with critical thinking and complex tasks. Sometime during the fall of 1991, Robin told a friend their marriage was in trouble, but she'd kill him before she'd get a divorce. Within a few months everyone around Robin knew of her plans to get a divorce. Randy's brother Bob claimed he heard 10 year old Joshua saying if they got divorced he wanted to stay with his step-father. Robin threatened to leave him before and said the kids were his problem because she didn't want to have to care for them. Randy told some friends that Robin was bored of him and the kids and wanted to start a new life.
Robin took out more insurance policies in January 1992 with double indemnity clauses. The entire assortment of insurance policies she'd taken out over the last three years would net her a total of $265,000. That January 28, Robin fell and hit her head while managing the YWCA's bingo night. A CAT scan at a local hospital found nothing wrong with her, but examination of the scan by a trained neurologist noted that she had a slightly undersized cerebellum and a mild degree of cerebral atrophy. Tabatha told a family friend Robin didn't want her and called her a "selfish little bitch." Robin called Betty Wines in California and cried that she was fired from the YWCA and wanted her to watch the kids for a year or so. She told another friend she wanted to go back to New Hampshire and get divorced due to how Idaho's property laws worked as they would entail her having to split her property up with Randy.Randy told a friend named Nancy Snow that Robin had arranged to remove her valuables from the house and was going to Colorado, Oregon, or Washington. He said it was odd that she wouldn't take the kids, but said it was not a surprise after what happened in California, although Snow didn't know what that meant. Robin told false stories that Randy was jailed for domestic violence and she was leaving him. She moved in with her friend Joan McHugh on February 7 and claimed Randy wouldn't let her have the kids.
Early in the morning of February 10, a fire broke out at the Row house. After firefighters put the blaze out, they found the bodies of Randy, Joshua, and Tabatha inside, all dead of inhaling smoke and fumes. Robin woke up Joan McHugh and told her they needed to go back to the house as she felt Randy was going to kidnap the kids. They were not able to see the fire from their location and shouldn't have been able to know it was happening, but Robin said "something terrible had happened." They drove down to the apartment and were told that it had burned and Randy and the kids were dead. Robin informed the YWCA that the money and files from the bingo game had been destroyed.Investigators determined that the fire was set deliberately by an arsonist on the north side of the closet door by pouring lighter fluid on a couple pairs of children's undergarments in the living room and setting them alight. The arsonist also disabled the smoke detector in the apartment so that Randy and the kids did not know a fire was happening. Robin had a storage unit in Meridian where detectives found cash and files that proved Robin's thefts from the YWCA bingo operation. She was arrested February 13 on grand larceny charges. It was also known that Robin spent a good deal of time with Joan McHugh's son John Blackwell, whom she developed an obsession with. This crush was entirely one-sided, but was believed the apparent motive for the murders. Her state income tax return for 1991 also claimed a nonexistent infant daughter named "Terra Row." When detectives told Robin about this, she shrugged and said "Add it to the list."
Robin tried to hang herself in the Ada County Jail on January 12, 1993 and was taken to a local hospital where she received a CAT scan. She had a degree of cerebral atrophy that seemed unusual for a 35 year old, but doctors suspected this was mostly the result of alcohol abuse. Other experts disputed that idea and claimed she was not known to be a heavy drinker. The exact cause of this brain atrophy was unclear as the condition of Robin's brain during her childhood was unknown. There was also no evidence that she'd sustained a major head injury or a stroke at any point in her life nor was she an alcohol or drug abuser or a victim of fetal alcohol syndrome as her brain did not exhibit signs of alcohol damage. With nothing else to go by, doctors concluded that her condition was probably a congenital one.She was tried and found guilty on March 16 of three counts of first degree murder and arson and sentenced to death at the end of the year. Only after being sentenced to death did Robin publicly disclose that her grandfather had molested her, which psychiatrists believed contributed to her mental issues.
Some medical experts argued that despite her diagnosed cerebral atrophy, Robin had exhibited a normal and in fact above average degree of intelligence and over the years proved that she was fully able to look after herself, hold down jobs, manage her finances, and maintain a household as well as planning and committing her crimes. She did not show any remorse for her crimes nor did she learn from her experiences, so she kept getting in trouble with the law and there was no reason to believe she would change her behavior. Robin cared for her children adequately and they were not abused or neglected, but she never seemed to love or bond with them in any way, according to friends.As of 2025, Robin Row remains on Idaho's death row awaiting execution, the state's only female death row inmate.
>>18587906>>18587870wtf? this woman is disgusting. how did she convince so many dudes to keep fucking her and knocking her up? don't you people have any standards?
>>18587896>>18587874>>18587878>the lesser Diana Downs
>>18587921loser guys with very low self-esteem who knew she was the best they would ever do. the kind of woman who would be realistically achievable for people on this website.
>>18587874>>18587878>>18587886>>18587896>>18587903White woman: The movie
>>18587932Why do these trash women who kill their kids also happen to be able to get pregnant so effortlessly? She literally had to get a hysterectomy to stop getting pregnant.
>>18587874none of this would have happened if her grandpa could have just stopped being a pedo
>>18587992So wait, her mom goes to get her an abortion and _doesn't_ report him to police??
>>18588002maybe she never said it was her grandpa. i get the impression nobody knew until she was arrested in 92. perhaps her mom just thought the dad was a neighbor boy her age.
just in case you were curious. New Hampshire allowed abortion for health reasons but not rape while it was completely legal in New York back then.
i looked a video of this case up on Youtube and it recommended me this video "Woman is so drunk she needs cop's help in putting her bra back on" and it was an obviously AI video.
>>18587885that was an expensive personal luxury car back then but in my childhood they were just old scrap you found at Biff's Used Cars for $1,000
*Prodigy - Firestarter plays*
>>18588131When you born?
>>18587870Looks like the perfect wife for /his/ atheists.
>>18588182In 88. There were still 79-85 E-bodies around in my childhood but the 86 onward ones you basically never saw despite being much newer, they didn't exist.
>>18587870>Row was born as Robin Cornellier in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on September 12, 1957French-Canadian I think.
>>18587896Tabetha would have grown up to be fucking fat, I can tell.
>>18588014Why are you assuming, AT ALL, that the cunt told the truth? Did you even read the OP? She lied constantly about literally everything to literally everyone. Surely she wouldn't make up a molestation story because it's an incredibly easy way to manipulate juries and psych evaluators.
>>18588482it would explain a lot of her psychoses so i'm confident it did happen
