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Dorothy Marie (Robards) Strauch

Dorothy Marie Strauch of 1000 Houston St - 4th Floor, in Fort Worth, Texas, Tarrant County, Texas USA was born on July 10, 1976. Dorothy Strauch was married to Karl Strauch on August 6, 2005 in Tarrant County, TX.

Dorothy Marie Strauch

Marie

Carter L. Hampton 1000 Houston St - 4th Floor, in Fort Worth, Texas, Tarrant County, Texas 76102, USA

July 10, 1976

Texas, United States

Alive

Female

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Dorothy Marie (Robards) Strauch Dorothy Strauch (born 1976)

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Dorothy Marie Strauch's History: 1976

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Introduction

Dorothy Marie Robards was born to Steven and Beth Robards. She went by the name "Marie", and was an only child. Dorothy Robards married Karl Strauch in Texas City, Texas in August of 2005. Marie was 29 at the time, and was out of jail after serving seven years of the twenty-seven years she had been sentenced. When Dorothy was 19, it was reported in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (January 27, 1995) that she was arrested for the murder of her father, Steven Robards, who was a letter carrier in Colleyville. He was 38 at the time of his death. It is alleged that he was bi-polar (it was described as "manic-depressive" back then) and Dorothy said that he abused her. His girlfriend at the time, Sandra Hudgins, disputed this and said that he was a loving father. See a photo of Dorothy Marie at 16, in a high school photo: Dorothy "Marie" Robards. Before Dorothy confessed to the murder, her father's death was thought to be from natural causes. See his obituary at Steven A. Robards Obituary. The truth came out when Dorothy told her friend Stacey High about her murdering her father during an emotional moment as the teenagers were reading about Shakespeare's Hamlet in class. Stacey struggled with what to do with the information - she told her mother right away, but took a few days to tell the police. This impacted Stacey's life significantly as told in this 1998 article Court observer recalls struggle with dark secret. When Dorothy was arrested, she told the police that she obtained barium acetate from her high school chemistry class because her teacher had shared with the class that it was poisonous. On February 18, 1993, she put some of the poison in her father's dinner (refried beans) and a few hours later, he sickened and died. She said that she only intended to make him ill. Dorothy's parents had divorced in 1980, and her mother had requested that Dorothy live with her father, although she had also frequently lived with her grandparents. She was a student at the University of Texas at Austin at the time of her arrest, but she returned to Granbury TX to live with her mother (Beth Burroughs) and stepfather (Frank Burroughs, a Hood County Sherriff's deputy) while she was under juvenile custody. Her father Steven had died when she was only 16, but she was later tried as an adult, and not a juvenile. On May 10, 1996, it was reported in The Monitor that Dorothy was found guilty of murdering her father by poisoning his food. The jury had deliberated about 50 minutes (another paper reported deliberations as taking 2 hours). She received a 28 yr sentence at the conviction hearing, and the sentence was upheld on appeal in 1998. She was also fined $10,000, which came out of her $67,000 inheritance from her father. She was eligible for parole in 2003. Dorothy had planned on becoming a coroner as an adult and had worked at TGIF's as a waitress, appearing in a commercial for them until they found out that she was on trial. To read about Dorothy's background and life until 2019 see Marie Robards: Deadly Daughter. Other sources of information: The crime was fictionalized in Megan Abbott's 2018 novel Give Me Your Hand, and covered in episodes of Forensic Files (Season 6, episode 5 (2001)), Redrum (Season 2, episode 17 (2014)), and Deadly Women (Season 6, episode 2 (2012)).
07/10

1976

Birthday

July 10, 1976

Birthdate

Texas United States

Birthplace

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Ethnicity & Family History

Dorothy was Caucasian. Her father was born in Texas.
Nationality & Locations

Dorothy lived in Fort Worth, Texas on Princeton Street, Taxco Road, Lotus Avenue, Chase Court, Sunfish Drive, and Edwards View Court. She also lived in Granbury, Texas on N. Port Ridge Court. She went to high school in Granbury. Later, she lived with her mother in the state of Florida. She was incarcerated at the Mountain View Unit Texas Womens' Prison and released early to live with her long-time penpal boyfriend, Karl Strauch. They had then married, and she became known as Marie Strauch. She is employed as a clerk at the Carter L. Hampton Law Center in the historic FlatIron Building in Fort Worth, Texas. When Dorothy Robards married Karl Strauch, she lived at 5333 Sunfish Drive 1022, Ft Worth, Texas. They obtained their license in Tarrant TX on July 26 2005 - about a week before they were married. Dorothy was 29 and Karl was 42. Dorothy also lived at 1725 W. Doyle St Granbury TX.
Early Life & Education

Dorothy "Marie" attended the University of Texas at Austin for 1 year, before she was arrested. She had previously attended Granbury High School in Granbury, Texas. See Dorothy "Marie" Robards for a 1976 photo of Dorothy that appeared in the Granbury High School yearbook.
Professional Career

After graduating from high school and attending college for a while, Dorothy, or "Marie", was arrested and jailed for the murder of her father. She was in jail until 2003 and married her penpal boyfriend upon release, when she became Marie Strauch. She works for a law firm in downtown Fort Worth, Texas.
Personal Life & Family

Dorothy Robards served jail time for the murder of her father. She was sentenced to 27 years but because she was a model prisoner, she only served seven years of her sentence. Since being released from jail, "Marie" has gone by the name Marie Strauch, changing her surname when she married Karl Strauch just a couple of years after her release.
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Living status

Alive

Living status
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9 Memories, Stories & Photos about Dorothy

Kathy Pinna

32.7k+ favorites

11/02/2020

Dorothy Marie (Robards) Strauch

A photo of Marie Robards from high school.

See Dorothy Marie (Robards) Strauch: Early Life & Education for more about Dorothy's education.

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Kathy Pinna

32.7k+ favorites

11/02/2020

Dorothy Marie (Robards) Strauch

A photo of Marie Robards a few months before she poisoned her father.

See Dorothy Marie (Robards) Strauch for more about Dorothy.

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Kathy Pinna

32.7k+ favorites

02/09/2023

Dorothy "Marie" Robards

1976 Granbury High School photo of Dorothy Marie Robards, known as Marie. She was 16 in this photo, just a few years before she was convicted of killing her father.

See Dorothy Marie (Robards) Strauch: Early Life & Education for more information about Dorothy's education.

Date & Place: 1976 at Granbury High School 2000 West Pearl Street, in Granbury, Hood County, Texas 76048, United States

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Jeddy Rodriguez

11 favorites

09/26/2023

Dorothy's Time at Mountain View Unit

I knew Dorothy while we were both incarcerated at the Texas womens' prison in Gatesville, Texas, also known as the Mountain View Unit. She was very mentally disturbed and did not ever appear remorseful for what she had done to her father, despite the news articles I've seen about her release implying that she had shown great remorse and deserved lenience. She had a very arrogant air about herself, and had often boasted about her boyfriend who visited often, insisting he would somehow get her released under the guise of her turning to a strict and repentant Catholic lifestyle. Nobody believed it in a million years, but there she went. Released after 7. Her and her husband gamed the system. He got her a job at a Fort Worth law firm and apparently she still goes by her married name of Marie Strauch. She is not living under an assumed name or went through any sort of witness protection name change.

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Kathy Pinna

32.7k+ favorites

11/02/2020

Dorothy Marie (Robards) Strauch

Dorothy Marie Robards with her mom.

Date & Place: Not specified or unknown.

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Daniel Pinna

10.5k+ favorites

07/19/2022

A 19-Year-Old-Woman

A 19-year-old woman who for a year had gotten away with murder until she confided in a friend that she had stirred poison into her father's beans broke down during her trial's punishment phase. The proceeding went directly into the punishment phase after jurors took less than an hour on Thursday to convict Dorothy Marie Robards of the 1993 murder of her father, Steven Robards, 38. "I'm so sorry. I'm so very sorry," Miss Robards said, sobbing. She said she only meant to make him sick, not to kill him.

-This article appeared in The Marshall News Messenger in Marshall Texas on Friday May 10th 1996:

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Daniel Pinna

10.5k+ favorites

07/19/2022

Court observer recalls struggle with dark secret

Mansfield- A conversation Stacey High had with her friend nearly four years ago is still a stirring moment in her life today. That's when Dorothy "Marie" Robards told Stacey she had poisoned her father. "The first thing went through my mind is that I believed her," High said yesterday, recalling that January 1994 day. "Her facial expressions, the atmosphere in which she told me - I completely believed her. At first I felt sympathy for her and what she was dealing with."

High told her mother about that conversation later in the day, but would anguish for three weeks before telling a high school counselor, who called in the police. "I searched inwardly and finally understood that I wasn't her judge," High said. "Any time you get information like that, it's your responsibility to report it and not try to be the judge of it."

High's decision is in contrast to those of at least four people who testified last week in teh capital murder trial of former Naval Academy midshipman Diane Zamora. Witnesses have testified that Zamora told them she killed 16-year-old Adrianne Jones of Mansfield. Unlike High, they never told police.

High's mother, Libby High, can't comprehend why. "I can't believe that so many people knew what she did, but they didn't say anything," said Libby High, 48, a friend of Adrianne's mother, Linda Jones. On Friday, District Judge Joe Drago dismissed jurors in the Zamora trial for the weekend. Libby High, who attended the trial to show support for the Jones family, said that after the first week of testimony, she left feeling disappointed, saddened and shocked.

Zamora's former best friend testified Zamora told her parents about the slaying, but instead of turning her in, they prayed with her. Zamora's parents have denied that they knew about her alleged involvement in Jones' death. They have not been called to testify in the case and are under a gag order that prohibits them from discussing the case with the media. "I think prayer is appropriate, but I don't think there's any question about what they should have done, and that is, get a good lawyer and a counselor," Libby High said.

"What is going to happen to our society when we try to justify murder and cover it up and say, 'Well, these are the things that would make it OK,' " she said. "In reality, we've lost track of what's right and what's wrong. "There are always lots of gray areas in life; there has to be," she said. "But as far as murder goes, it's pretty black-and-white."

In her daughter's situation, Libby High said, she wanted to call police immediately after Stacey told her, but trusted her daughter. "I have been chastised greatly because I did not go to the police right away, but I had great faith in my daughter to do what was right," she said. "There was no doubt in my mind."

Robards was convicted in May 1996 of murder and sentenced to 28 years in prison. High was a key witness in the trial, in which prosecutors said Robards poisoned her father's beans with barium acetate in February 1993. Prosecutors said Robards, then 16, took the chemical from her high school chemistry class.

Officials though Robards' father had died from natural causes. Robards and High, both teens at the time, had been reading a scene about murder and conscience from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Then Robards confessed to High.

Last month, the 2nd Texas District Court of Appeals in Fort Worth upheld Robards' prison sentence. High, now a 21-year-old college student in the Texas A&M University system, said that her involvement with the case was at times trying. She didn't hear from police for months after she told them, she was threatened during the trial, and she was dealing with her own personal problems.

Her mother said her involvement would teach her about making decisions and distinguishing right from wrong. "I'm not sorry about testifying," Stacey High said, "and although I have certain regrets about the whole situation, I would definitely do it again.

"We need people in our society that stand up for what they believe in," she said. "If you're stepping on God's territory, which is what you're doing when you kill someone, it becomes a very big moral issue for me."

-This article appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Fort Worth Texas on Sunday February 8th 1998 and was written by Christy Gonzales:

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Kathy Pinna

32.7k+ favorites

02/09/2023

Steven A. Robards Obituary

STEVEN A. ROBARDS

Fort Worth - Steven A. Robards, a rural carrier for the U.S. Postal Service in Colleyville, died Thursday at a Fort Worth Hospital. He was 38. Funeral will be at 3:30 p.m. Monday at Hugh M. Moore & Sons Funeral Home in Arlington. Burial will be in Moore Memorial Gardens.

Mr. Robards was born in Dallas and had lived in Fort Worth since 1959. He was a member of Richland Hills Church of Christ. The family suggest that memorials be made to Richland Hills Church of Christ, Family Care Ministries. Survivors: Daughter, Marie Robards of Fort Worth; father, Jim Robards of Mansfield, mother Patricia Bottger of Plano; brother, Clayton Robards of Kennedale; sister, Stephanie Elder of Frisco; and grandmother, Alma Labenski of Dallas.

This obituary appeared in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Fort Worth, Texas) on Sunday, February 21, 1993.

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Kathy Pinna

32.7k+ favorites

11/02/2020

Marie Robards: Deadly Daughter

Dorothy Marie Robards — Marie to those who knew her — wasn’t the kind of kid anyone would expect to get into trouble. Smart, studious, and quiet, she learned to write in cursive by the first grade. In high school, she made good grades, played the clarinet, and took art and dance classes. She also enjoyed a close relationship with her mother, Beth Burroughs, and step-father, Frank Burroughs, who had been married since Marie was four years old. Marie even called him “dad.”

Her biological father, Steven Robards, she only saw once or twice a month. Steven and Beth had gotten married young and divorced after only a few years.

But in the summer of 1992, things would take a dramatic turn for the worse. The weekend before her 16th birthday, she came home to find Frank with another woman. Marie was furious.

However, when Marie told her mother what she’d caught Frank doing, Beth blamed herself rather than Frank. She worked long hours at an emergency room, she explained, and that probably had made Frank feel “neglected.” Marie could not understand why Beth would choose to stay with a man who had cheated on her. Consequently, she became sullen, especially towards Frank. She refused to listen to him and talked back to him. Finally, she told her mother she couldn’t stand living under the same roof as him.

Beth stuck by her decision to stay with Frank and “work on” their marriage. She made arrangements for Marie to go live with her parents in Fort Worth, Texas, about 45 minutes away. Five days later, Marie arrived back at the Burroughs’ home, begging to move back in.
But Frank had instituted a strict rule against that. In order to stop the children in their blended family from moving from parent to parent whenever they didn’t get their way, the rule was that once they moved out, they could never move back in.

So the decision was made for Marie to go live with her father back in Fort Worth. Steven, for his part, was excited to have his daughter come live with him. He often took her out to restaurants and movies. He immediately applied for a two-bedroom apartment in his complex; in the meantime, Marie slept on a rollaway bed in the dining room.

Marie, however, was not as happy with the arrangements. She was on the phone with her mother every night, long distance (this was back in the days when long-distance calls cost considerably more than local ones). She complained that he never cleaned the apartment and didn’t even have enough utensils in the kitchen. She hated her new high school, which was much bigger than her old one. At one point, she wrote her mother a letter threatening suicide. Beth just thought it was a typical teenager’s over-dramatic ploy to get her way.

After a few months went by, Marie seemed to settle into her new life. She was making excellent grades at her new school — especially in chemistry.
Then, on Feb. 17, 1993, Steven fell gravely ill. The two had shared a dinner of take-out Mexican food, then Steven had gone to an evening church service. He came home early complaining of stomach cramps. They kept getting worse, so at one point, Marie went to the apartment of Steven’s girlfriend, Sandra Hudgins, and told her that Steven was really sick. She stayed in Sandra’s apartment with her young son while Sandra went to check on Steven.

Sandra said that when she got there, Steven’s arms and legs were stiff, and he was having a hard time swallowing. He was foaming at the mouth. Sandra dialed 911 immediately.

When paramedics arrived, they tried to intubate Steven, but his throat was closed shut. At that point, Marie came back to the apartment. Sandra said Marie just stood in the doorway, frozen, likely in shock. As it became clear that Steven was dying, Sandra hugged her, turning the teenager’s face away so she wouldn’t see the awful sight. The coroner would later determine Steven’s cause of death was a heart attack. Later that night, Beth and Frank arrived to take Marie back to their house.

At Steven’s funeral, Marie was still in shock, it seemed. Witnesses said she stood by the grave in a daze. Shortly afterwards, Beth took her aside and told her that she was finally leaving Frank, and that she and Marie would be moving to Florida together. Marie seemed incredulous. “You had this plan all along to take me to Florida?” she asked.

When Beth told her yes, that she’d found a job there, Marie seemed to have a hard time breathing. At the time, Beth thought it was just the shock of so many things happening at once.

In Florida, the idyllic life Marie had imagined with just her and her mother didn’t materialize. Marie was so depressed that some days she couldn’t get out of bed. Beth sent her to a counselor, but it didn’t seem to do any good.

Then, that summer, Frank arrived on Beth and Marie’s doorstep. He wanted to patch things up with Beth, promising to change and work harder on their marriage. Beth, against Marie’s protests, took him back.
But — in a twist that should surprise no one — only weeks later, Marie found a note on his pillow from another woman. Beth said Marie told her, “Mom, you can put up with him if you want to, but I don’t have to. I miss Texas, and I’m going home.” So Beth contacted Marie’s other grandparents, Steven’s father and step-mother, and arranged for Marie to go live with them back in Fort Worth.

Once again in a new high school, Marie nonetheless excelled, making straight A’s, playing on the volleyball team, and working on the yearbook staff. Even though she was quiet and reserved, her classmate Stacey High was immediately drawn to her. Coming from an abusive background herself, Stacey recognized the signs that Marie was trying to hide something. So Stacey reached out to her, and before long, the two were best friends.
Despite the two being nearly inseparable, Stacey could never get Marie to talk about her dad. It was the same at home with her grandparents: Marie refused to go to his gravesite and would leave the room if he was mentioned.

About halfway through their senior year, Marie and Stacey were working on their English homework: reading Hamlet. Stacey recalled reading King Claudius’ soliloquy in Act III, the one that begins:
“O, my offence is rank it smells to heaven;
It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,
A brother’s murder. Pray can I not,
Though inclination be as sharp as will:
My stronger guilt defeats my strong intent;…”
Stacey said that upon hearing the soliloquy, Marie’s face went white, and her hands were trembling. “Stacey,” Marie asked, “Do you think people can go through life without a conscience?”
Stacey said she responded, “Well, how about the kind of person who can look somebody in the eye and kill him in cold blood?”
At that, Stacey said, Marie got up from the table where they were studying and backed up against the wall, crumpling to the floor in tears.
Stacey asked Marie what was wrong. Marie answered with a question: What was the worst thing she could think of?
Stacey, a typical teenager, immediately thought Marie was pregnant. But that wasn’t it. After a few guesses, Stacey jokingly asked, “You didn’t kill somebody, did you?”

Marie broke down in sobs. “My father,” she said. “I poisoned him.” She told her that she’d stolen some barium acetate from chemistry class and slipped it into her father’s refried beans the night he died.

Marie then swore Stacey to secrecy.

Stacey, for her part, tried to keep her best friend’s secret. But she began being haunted by nightmares of Marie chasing her, or of Steven calling to her from the grave. Her mental health deteriorated; she started drinking and “partying too much” to try and distract herself from her guilty secret.
At one point, she told her mother. But Stacey’s mother thought that Marie had just made it up because she was distraught over her father’s death. The few close friends she confided in said the same thing. Stacey said she had a complete mental breakdown, and ended up checking herself into an outpatient mental-health facility.

After several weeks of this torment, Stacey couldn’t take it anymore. She finally went to the school counselor and told her to call the police about Marie. In order to corroborate Stacey’s story, the Fort Worth police would have to test Steven’s blood for barium acetate. Luckily, they were able to get his preserved tissue samples just days before they were set to be destroyed. The hard part was finding a lab that had the proper equipment to test for barium acetate: a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer, a machine that costs about $150,000. It took them nearly four months to find a lab with the proper equipment, all the way in Pennsylvania. Then it took another several months before the results came back.

In the meantime, Stacey and Marie graduated and went on to college — Marie, to the University of Texas at Austin; Stacey, to Sam Houston State University in Huntsville. Marie, who was studying to become a medical pathologist, paid her tuition with the $60,000 life insurance money left to
her by her father.

While waiting on the lab’s results, Fort Worth police did some investigating on their own. They went to the high-school chemistry classroom where Marie had attended while she was living with her father. There, they found barium acetate. They also found a safety manual with pages for each of the chemicals listing safety precautions, toxicity amounts, and what to do in case of accidental poisoning. The page for barium acetate was missing. When the tests came back showing Steven had 28 times the lethal amount of barium acetate in his body, police went to Austin to arrest Marie. She surrendered without incident.

Once inside the station, she very quickly confessed to what she had done. When asked why, she said it was because she had wanted to go and live with her mom again. She was released on bond, and using the insurance money, retained a pair of veteran defense attorneys. Their strategy was to claim that Marie didn’t know the chemical would kill her father; she had only wanted to make him sick. That claim didn’t hold up under any scrutiny. First, Marie was an excellent chemistry student — she knew exactly how lethal barium acetate was. She had even taken the page out of the school’s chemical safety manual so she could insure her own safety while poisoning her father with it. On top of that, if she only wanted to make her father sick, how would that help her go live with her mother? But perhaps most damning was the fact that when her father was lying on his floor, writhing in agony while the paramedics tried to save him, she had said nothing.

On May 9, 1996, after deliberating only an hour, the jury came back with its verdict: guilty of one count of first-degree murder. At her sentencing hearing, she cried and repeated how sorry she was, but was still sentenced to 27 years in prison. Behind bars, she was a model inmate. In 2003, after serving only seven years of her sentence, she was released on parole. She has since married and taken her husband’s last name.

Strangely, there are many — including Steven’s parents — who have sympathy for Marie. They see her as a good girl who just “made a mistake,” despite the meticulous planning involved and her years of hiding her crime. Others point to her apparent regret and sorrow over her actions as proof she isn’t really a cold-blooded killer.
While I can understand those perspectives, I also can see that there are many other prisoners in Texas prisons and all over the country, who are sentenced to — and serve — much longer sentences for much lesser crimes. I suppose not having a big insurance fund to cover the cost of a good attorney could be a big factor in that. But I also can’t help but wonder if Marie Robards hadn’t been a pretty white girl, would she have gotten as much sympathy and forgiveness?

Much of this information comes from the excellent reporting in “Poisoning Daddy.”
-by DeLani R. Bartlette Sept 9 2019

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