Episode 12. A Psychopath in the Family?

The Effect

It is 10.30 in the morning of 30th December 1978 when a teenage boy, Timothy Trevethick, pays a visit to the home of his 15 year-old girlfriend Susan Spangler. He knocks on the door of her house but there is no answer. He knocks harder, still nothing. Knowing that Susan definitely is at home, together with her older brother David and their mother Nancy, Timothy thinks it a little odd that nobody is answering the door. But assuming the family has overslept for some reason, he grabs a handful of pebbles from the garden and tries throwing them at Susan’s window. There is still no response.

Getting nowhere, Timothy tries the front door and finds it locked. He proceeds around the back of the house, attempting to open a window as he goes, but they are all locked, too. However, the basement window does open, just enough to allow Timothy to shimmy through it. Inside, the house is eerily quiet. Too quiet, he realises. Timothy continues up to Susan’s room and pushes open the door. He had been right, she must have overslept, as she is lying in her bed utterly still, as though in a deep sleep. Timothy playfully throws his hat at the bed, calling her name. But she does not stir. At this point, he begins to think that something is very wrong, that Susan is not asleep at all. And, peeling back the bedclothes, that is when he sees it. A gunshot wound in her back, right over the heart.

In a state of panic at the appalling discovery he has just made, Timothy races into the bedroom of Susan’s brother David, freezing on the threshold. David’s room is a bloody mess, the bedding, objects and furniture within it in utter disarray. And in the middle of it all is David himself, lying with his head on the floor and feet on the bed. He is dead, and by the disorder in the room it appears to Timothy that David’s death has come after a great effort to defend himself. Blood from a single gunshot wound saturates the front of his shirt. Unable to believe what is happening, Timothy moves towards the bedroom of Susan’s mother Nancy, expecting to see a third abominable scene awaiting him. But, to his surprise, the room is empty. Nancy is not there. Confused and frightened, it is at this point that Timothy calls the police.

When the police arrive at the Spanglers’ family home, they discover the missing Nancy in the basement. She is sitting slumped over her typewriter, dead from a gunshot wound to the centre of her forehead. Police notice that a sheet of paper is sticking out of the top of the typewriter. They see it is a suicide note, recently typed by Nancy, something that seems to be supported by the fact that she has initialled the bottom of the note by hand using a pen.

‘What do I say now?’ the suicide note reads. ‘I’ve decided to do this. I found the gun by accident some time ago and couldn’t help thinking about this. I don’t know why I didn’t say anything to you. I feel shattered. We have always argued about who’d have the kids. I will. I know you will get along. You always have.’

The contents of this suicide note appear to leave little doubt. Nancy Spangler is a mother who has done the unthinkable: murdered both her children and taken her own life as well.

Lying on the ground just a few feet away from Nancy is her husband’s Smith & Wesson .38 revolver, covered in a sock. The police carry out a search of the rest of the house, and come across another clue which they believe supports the assumption that Nancy shot her children before turning the gun on herself. In Nancy’s bedroom, a step ladder is positioned in front of the closet where her husband’s gun was kept, allowing her to reach up and retrieve it before she committed her crime.

With the police at the Spanglers’ house, and the three bodies still inside, it is then that Nancy’s husband and the father of David and Susan, arrives home. His name is Robert, an employee of a local water company, and he is returning from a trip to the cinema, only to find a host of police cars and emergency vehicles surrounding his house, their lights blazing. Inside, the ultimate horror awaits. The woman who had been his childhood sweetheart, and his wife of two decades, is dead, his children murdered by her own hand.

Naturally, the police are keen to speak to Robert. And this courteous man, with his respectable job, is happy to speak to them, too. He admits that in recent months he and his wife had been having marital problems. But, he vows, he had no idea that Nancy was capable of something as appalling as this. Robert also tells the police Nancy and him had been separated for nine months, that he had left some time ago, but recently moved back into the family home in an effort to save his marriage.

Robert Spangler readily agrees to a polygraph test, promising the police he will cooperate in any way he can. He undergoes no less than two separate polygraphs, but due to the stress he is under at having discovered his wife dead and two children murdered, he hyperventilates both times, making it impossible to obtain a valid reading. Robert’s hands and gloves are also tested for gunshot residue, so the police can eliminate him from their enquiries. After all, had Robert fired a gun in the past twenty-four hours, traces of gunpowder would most certainly still be embedded in his skin. But Robert’s hands are perfectly clean. The technician who tests for the gunpowder feels so sorry for Robert in the terrible wake of what has happened to him that he invites him to spend the evening at his house with his family, where they all enjoy a meal of spaghetti bolognese.

To all appearances, having his entire family wiped out in such an unexpected and brutal way devastates Robert Spangler. He arranges for the bodies of his wife and children to be cremated immediately and apparently finds the reminders of them at his home so painful that he clears out their possessions shortly after their deaths. But friends of Nancy Spangler suspect there is more to the tragedy than meets the eye. Would they be right in their assumption? It would take another twenty-two years to find out.

The Method Part I

The friends of Nancy Spangler, a woman who had apparently shot both of her children before turning the gun on herself, were convinced Nancy wasn’t guilty. She would never hurt her children. Moreover, she wasn’t suicidal. She had just finished a degree, secured the new job she’d wanted. She had never been depressed and had displayed no signs of suicidal thoughts prior to her death. The day before the terrible discovery, Nancy had been upbeat about her future, despite having found out that Robert had recently begun an affair with one of his coworkers.

And why were none of the red flags present at the crime scene ever taken seriously, many asked? Why had Nancy’s supposed suicide note been typed and then initialled by hand, before being placed back in the typewriter? Why was there no high velocity blood splatter on Nancy’s body or clothing, given she had just shot two other people? Why were there no marks or injuries on her, given her 17 year-old son David had not died without a struggle? No traces of gunpowder residue were ever found on Nancy’s fingers. Was this really because she had placed the weapon inside a sock before firing it? And if so, why?

Additionally, there were no fingerprints on the keys of the typewriter, but there were obvious wipemarks, although it seemed to make no sense that a suicidal woman would write such a desperate note and then take the trouble to clean her typewriter before pointing the gun at herself. And several things about the way the weapon had been fired didn’t make sense either. The coroner determined that the gun that killed Nancy had been fired 2-8 inches from her head, yet most self-inflicted gunshot injuries are contact wounds, meaning the barrel of the weapon is pressed to the victim’s skin before it is fired. In addition, Nancy suffered from a neurological condition which resulted in weakness in her hands, making it doubtful that she could have even held a raised gun, let alone kept it steady enough to pull the trigger.

But, despite all of this, police maintained that there was no concrete evidence to suggest the case was anything other than a murder-suicide, carried out by a depressed and desperate woman.

Just seven months after his family’s deaths Robert Spangler remarried, his new wife moving into the same home in which the terrible tragedy had occurred. His second wife, Sharon Cooper, was, like Robert, a keen hiker. They’d met at work, but had kept their affair under wraps in order for Robert to avoid an acrimonious and costly divorce from Nancy. Though acquaintances of the couple were surprised at how quickly Robert had moved on, the relationship seemed to be a happy one. That was, until December 1987, when police received a frantic call from Sharon. She was scared of her husband, she claimed, and was certain he was going to hurt her. She’d fled from their home and hidden in a supermarket stock room for safety. But as Sharon was known to be on medication at the time for the bi-polar disorder from which she suffered, her fears were not taken seriously. Soon after the incident, Robert and Sharon divorced, and Robert began paying Sharon a monthly settlement.

In 1990, Robert Spangler was back in the dating game again, placing a lonely hearts advert and marrying once more. His third wife was Donna Sundling. At first, it appeared they had a lot in common, but the marriage quickly began to unravel. Then, in 1993, just three years after their wedding, Robert showed up at a ranger station in the Grand Canyon national park claiming his wife had taken a tragic fall. While he’d been setting up his camera to get a shot of them both, he said, Donna had stumbled over the edge of a steep drop. He’d scrambled down the incline to reach her, but was too late. She was dead. So he’d washed the blood from her face and covered it with a cloth, before trekking to the ranger station for help. In the wake of her death, Robert gave a series of interviews to outline the dangers of hiking. He was clear and detailed, and despite Donna’s recent terrible death, seemed to enjoy it. But then again he also enjoyed amateur dramatics, so was no stranger to the limelight.

Following Donna’s untimely death, Robert rekindled his relationship with his second wife Sharon. He told her what had happened to Donna. ‘Why does everyone I love keep leaving me?’ he’d cried and, feeling sorry for her ex-husband, Sharon moved back in with him. However, just five months later, Sharon was dead too, from an overdose of the prescription medication she took. Freed from the spousal support he’d been paying to Sharon since their divorce, Robert arranged her cremation straight away. Three marriages and three dead ex-wives. Either Robert Spangler was the unluckiest groom in the world, or this was beginning to look like one premature end too many.

In the late 1990s, Robert Spangler started looking for wife number four. But by the time he married Judy Hilty, he and the deaths of his three ex-wives were being investigated by the FBI. In the year 2000, Robert was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. With not long to live, police saw their chance to induce him into making a confession. But how? From their dealings with Robert in the past, and their knowledge of his love of the limelight, FBI agents realised that the way to handle him was to play to his enormous ego. Agents paid a visit to his house, claiming they were wanting to have a routine chat with him at the police station to clear some old cases. But what Robert Spangler didn’t know was, in order to give them the best chance of securing a confession, the FBI had gone to great lengths to set the stage, even arranging a fake task force and preparing an incredible interview script. But would it work?

The Method Part II

Robert Spangler, accompanied by FBI agents, arrived at the station, completely unaware that the stage had been set to prompt a confession. The first thing he saw was a door marked ‘The Spangler Task Force’. This led to a room that had been completely set up for Robert’s benefit. The space was a hive of activity. An army of agents clad in headsets sat at computers as if they were working full-time on the case. Filing cabinets and boxes spilled over with documentation apparently relating to Robert. Whiteboards covered with his name and the details of his life lined the walls. Robert couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

He proceeded into an interview room to speak to FBI case agent Lenny Johns, who started to feed Robert lines from a carefully pre-written script. ‘You can help us get better at what we do,’ Lenny told him. ‘You are a fascinating, intelligent individual and I look at you in awe. I can learn from you.’ Just as the FBI hoped, Robert glowed with pride. ‘You are an interesting person.’ Lenny continued. By the time Robert replied: ‘I understand serial killers are supposed to be,’ the FBI knew their plan was working. The next day, Robert called them wanting to talk. By this point he may well have been aware of their tactics, but was enjoying the praise and attention so much he couldn’t help but want more.

In the next interview, Lenny Johns continued with his script. ‘My interest in this is selfish,’ he said. ‘I get to tell my grandkids about Bob Spangler. I may go the rest of my career without talking to anyone like you ever again.’ Robert sat straighter in his chair. ‘Fascinating!’ he exclaimed proudly. Then Lenny moved on to the most important line of the script. He told Robert that, despite his admiration of him, he was only able to speak to ‘real serial killers’, people who had committed more than three murders. Robert weighed things up for a moment. ‘Okay, you’ve got your serial,’ he replied.

Robert Spangler went on to give the confession the FBI had been waiting for. He was bored with his marriage, he said. He’d moved back in with Nancy under false pretences. His aim was never to rekindle the marriage, it was to kill her. It had all been premeditated. His children had gotten wind of his affair and weren’t happy about it. He lured Nancy down to the basement telling her he had a surprise for her, claiming the suicide note was a document that needed signing, which prompted her to readily add her initial. Then he shot her. Moving upstairs to his children’s bedrooms, he next shot Susan in the back. But the gunshot wound to David was not fatal, and his son put up a fight. Unable to shoot David a second time, Robert smothered him with a pillow. After committing the horrific acts, he took himself off to the cinema. ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time’, Robert said. ‘You reach a decision to take their lives, but a curtain comes down and you’re not really involved.’

Robert also confessed to the murder of his third wife Donna. Knowing the marriage wasn’t working and fearing another expensive divorce, he had talked her into a Grand Canyon hiking trip and pushed her to her death. He had even stopped fellow hikers on the trail asking them where they were camping, to ensure there wouldn’t be any witnesses.

Despite his confessions to the murders of Nancy, David, Susan and Donna, Robert denied all responsibility for the death of his second wife Sharon. Bizarrely, he then went on to backtrack, changing his story again, and pleading not guilty to the murders he’d already confessed to, blaming his confessions on the cancer that was ravaging his brain.

It was clear to the FBI agents who interviewed him that Robert Spangler was a psychopath. He had no remorse for the crimes he’d committed. As he put it himself, ‘a curtain came down’ and he’d been able to completely disconnect. According to the Canadian psychologist Dr Robert Hare, psychopaths are charming, grandiose, impulsive, irresponsible, deceptive, and promiscuous. Crucially, though, just like Robert Spangler they lack empathy and do not feel guilt.

Whether Robert’s fourth wife, Judy, was aware of the true extent of his psychology or not is unclear. But she stood by him until the end, even holding her husband’s hand while he was describing the murders of his wives and children. ‘He always seemed a very gentle person,’ she stated. At the time he was arrested, Robert was about to take her on a trip to the Grand Canyon. It seemed like she had had a very lucky escape.

© 2025, Lora Jones. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited without written permission.