Robin was last seen on the Chain of Rocks Bridge in St. Louis, Missouri at 11:25 p.m. on April 5, 1991. The bridge spans the Mississippi River at the Missouri/Indiana state line. Robin and her 20-year-old sister, Julie Ann Kerry, had taken a visiting 19-year-old cousin from Maryland, Tom Cummins, to the bridge to show him a graffiti poem they had painted there several years earlier. A photograph of Julie is posted below this case summary.

Several hours later, Tom contacted police and told them four men had attacked him and his cousins, robbed Tom, raped the women and pushed them off the bridge into the river. Tom then jumped off the bridge after being ordered to do so by the attackers. He saw Julie in the water, still alive, but they became separated and he never saw her or Robin again. Tom was able to swim to shore and get help. Julie's body was recovered in Caruthersville, Missouri several weeks later, but Robin's remains were never located.

Authorities initially suspected Tom had been responsible for the Kerry sisters' deaths and that he made up the story about the other men to cover up his own crime. He failed a polygraph shortly after making his initial report. Investigators theorized that Julie had accidentally fallen off the bridge while resisting Tom's sexual advances, and Robin jumped in to save her, and both of them drowned. Tom was charged with murdering his cousins, but he was quickly released for lack of evidence of guilt, and the investigation turned in another direction. Tom later won a settlement against the St. Louis police department for wrongful interrogation techniques.

Marlin Gray, Daniel Winfrey, Reginald Clemons, and Clemons's cousin, Antonio D. Richardson, were subsequently convicted of raping and murdering Robin and Julie and robbing Tom. His belongings were found in their possession after their arrests. All four defendants confessed to the crime, and their stories were consistent with Tom's version of events, but three of them later recanted. Winfrey, who was 15 years old at the time of the murders and the only attacker who did not participate in the rapes, took a plea bargain and was sentenced to 30 years in prison for his testimony against the others. He is still incarcerated. The other three men were sentenced to death. Gray was executed in October 2005 and Clemons is still on death row, but Richardson's sentence was commuted to life in prison in 2005.

Both Robin and Julie were students at the University of Missouri at St. Louis in 1991; Julie was an English major. Foul play is suspected in Robin's case due to the circumstances involved. Tom's sister, Jeanine, wrote a book about her cousins' murders called A Rip in Heaven.

Above: Julie Kerry