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Parma murder is focus of television show
By Denise Dick
The case of a Poland native freed from jail last year after admitting poisoning his late wife has made it to the small screen.
The Robert Girts case is the subject of “The Perfect Murder” airing at 9 p.m. Wednesday on Investigation Discovery.
The episode is titled, “Silent Killer.”
Girts pleaded guilty last year to involuntary manslaughter and insurance fraud in the 1992 death of Diane Jones Girts, his third wife.
“‘The Perfect Murder’ looks at murder investigations that were very difficult to solve, often taking detectives years to investigate,” a show representative wrote in an email. “Particularly, the show focuses on murderers who carefully planned their crimes, hoping to outsmart the police. The murder of Diane Girts began as a medical mystery, and it was only through relentless work that detectives began to realize that foul play was involved.”
Investigation Discovery can be viewed on Time Warner Cable in Youngstown on channel 139 and Armstrong cable on channel 420.
Diane’s body was found in the bathtub of the Ohio home where the couple lived.
The case twisted through the courts for years.
“The Perfect Murder” is a true-crime series telling stories of murder cases through interviews with law enforcement, family and friends of the victims and reenactments.
Girts wasn’t interviewed for the program. The program will include interviews with Parma police detectives and a former Cuyahoga County prosecutor who had worked on the case, as well as some of Diane Girts’ family and friends.
Girts, 63, had been convicted twice of Diane’s murder, but those convictions were overturned on technicalities. He pleaded guilty in 2014 to involuntary manslaughter and insurance fraud and was sentenced to an indefinite term of six to 30 years in prison and given credit for time served. In August 2014, the Ohio Parole Board decided that he would serve at least 10 more years before being eligible for parole.
But Girts appealed, and the 8th District Court of Appeals threw out both the plea and the sentence, finding that his sentence did not conform with the 2014 sentencing rules and had to be redone.
In late 2015, he again pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and insurance fraud.
“I put cyanide in the salt shaker before I left for Chicago, knowing she would use the salt,” Girts said in court.
A Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court judge sentenced Girts to 11 years on the involuntary manslaughter charge and one year on insurance fraud.
But because he’d already served about 18 years, Girts was released. The judge ordered him to serve five years of post-release control, requiring him to report to a parole officer.
Girts’ first wife also died young, but her death wasn’t ruled a murder. He and wife No. 2 divorced. While he was out of prison and before the latest plea, Girts married a fourth time.
That woman also was afraid of him, according to documents filed in court by prosecutors at the time.
Bettianne Jones, Diane’s sister-in-law, is among those interviewed for the show.
She’s been keeping tabs on the case for years, attending hearings and contacting prosecutors along the way. Jones’ late husband, Barry, was Diane’s brother.
“I agreed to do the show because I wanted to document the case and perhaps save someone else from a similar fate,” Jones said in a text message.
She said she told producers: “If someone you know gets involved with someone who becomes abusive – it doesn’t have to be physical – moves them away from family, is controlling and you have red flags and your intuition tells you something is not right, speak up. Don’t be afraid to say anything.”
People who attended Diane’s funeral told her family members to check into her death because they believed something was wrong, Jones said.
“I knew from the instant we received the phone call that she died that he had something to do with it,” she said. “It was a gut feeling we had that pushed us to keep looking into things that eventually led to his arrest and conviction.
“Robert Girts might have thought he committed the perfect murder, but he didn’t,” Jones said. “He is a convicted murderer and I feel he is always looking for his next victim – so be aware.”