8-year-old Hiawayi Robinson was raped and murdered by her father Hiawatha Robinson

This week on See No Evil, the team investigates the heartwrenching case of Hiawayi Robinson, an 8-year-old girl from Prichard, Alabama, who was raped and murdered by her father.

On September 16, 2014, Hiawayi left her mother and grandmother’s home to be picked up by her father, Hiawatha Robinson. Sometime later, Robinson phoned the house to say Hiawayi had never turned up at the pick-up point.

After multiple agencies initiated a search, her body was found two days later on a trash pile in Prichard nearby to where her father used to work. She was partially naked and had been sodomized and suffocated to death.

A shocked family and community demanded justice. Her father, Robinson, played the role of a grieving father, even giving TV interviews where he demanded justice for his daughter.

The evidence mounted against Hiawatha Robinson

However, police became suspicious of Robinson when they began to find holes in his story. Despite his claim that he had never made contact with his daughter, surveillance footage from several businesses showed them together buying candy.

Then investigators discovered various items of Hiawayi’s clothing in Robinson’s car. Duct tape and a hair bead found at the crime scene also matched the tape and a bead found in his car. Semen was found on Hiawayi’s t-shirt, but it was never connected to her father.

Hiawatha Robinson was sentenced to 100 years in prison for the brutal crime. He continued to maintain his innocence and argued with the judge throughout his sentence hearing. He told the judge, “I won’t apologize for something I didn’t do.”

On hearing that he’d been sentenced to 100 years, he said: “That’s alright. I’ll be back.”

Investigators now believe that Robinson sexually assaulted Hiawayi on multiple occasions and that it was the final assault that killed the 8-year-old.

In 2019, Robinson lost an appeal to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals.

More from See No Evil

Follow the links to read about more murders profiled on See No Evil.

Last week on See No Evil, the team investigated Joanna Hayes, who gunned down her daughter-in-law Heather Strube in the parking lot of a Target because she feared Heather was going to win custody of her grandson in a court battle with her son.

Devonere Simmonds walked into a convenience store in Columbus, Ohio, and instantly shot dead the clerk, Imran Ashgar. Simmonds and his friend Nathaniel Brunner subsequently embarked on a violent crime spree before being apprehended by cops in Dayton, Ohio.

See No Evil airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on Investigation Discovery.