Murder of Robin Benedict by university professor Bill Douglas examined on Married with Secrets

ID is re-airing the Married with Secrets investigation into the murder of Robin Benedict by William “Bill” Douglas, a university professor who beat Benedict to death with a sledgehammer in a suburb of Boston, Massachusetts.

Douglas was a respected anatomy professor at Tufts University and was married with three children when he began an unhealthy obsession with Benedict. Benedict was a 21-year-old artist who also worked as a sex worker.

The pair first met at a bordello in Boston’s red light district, colloquially known as the Combat Zone. Benedict charged the professor $100 an hour for sexual favors, and by the summer of 1982, Douglas was seeing her daily.

Douglas embezzled over $50,000 from the university to pay for his sordid lifestyle.

The killer’s obsession with the young woman grew more intense and soon turned deadly. On March 5, 1983, Benedict vanished, and her remains have never been found.

The investigators learned that Douglas had phoned Benedict 12 times and spoken with her four times on the night she disappeared. The police also found bloody clothes belonging to both the killer and the victim in a trash can near Douglas’s home in Sharon, MA.

Bill Douglas confessed to killing Robin Benedict

Douglas eventually confessed to the murder. He said he bashed Benedict in the head with a 2-and-a-half-pound sledgehammer.

The killer then put her in the trunk of her car, which he drove to Providence, RI, where he dumped Benedict’s remains into a dumpster.

The twisted professor then abandoned the vehicle in New York City.

The case became notorious because the defense team deployed a tactic of victim blaming where Benedict’s name was denigrated, and accusations were made that she attempted to extort money from Douglas.

Douglas claimed that Benedict had come to his home with a sledgehammer and had wanted to kill him because she believed he owed her $5,000. The killer also accused Benedict of charging him $1,000 to go on a trip to Charlestown to pick up cocaine. Of course, Benedict was unable to defend herself against such accusations.

Bill Douglas sentenced to 18 to 20 years for Robin Benedict murder

At one point during the trial, Defense attorney Thomas Troy claimed, “A gentle, sensitive, educated man left his Alice in Wonderland of the scientific world for the Combat Zone’s world of sin and sex, and there, Samson met his Delilah. Bill Douglas met his downfall – a paramour for pay. His child-like infatuation made Bill Douglas a prisoner of sex and dope and intrigue.”

Douglas eventually pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to 18 to 20 years in jail. He was released after nine years.

This episode of Married with Secrets re-airs Saturday at 8/7c on Investigation Discovery.