Who Killed The West Virginia Nun, Roberta Elam?

👼Roberta Ann "Robin" Elam👼

She was a brilliant, gregarious young woman who drove an orange sports car, jogged and hiked, wrote poetry about the mountains that soared above and laughed as often as possible.

Roberta was born on August 23rd, 1950 in Ramsey County, Minnesota. She was the oldest of four children and grew up in Minnesota and Illinois before moving with her family to New Jersey. While in graduate school at Fordham University, she became friends with fellow student Sister Kathleen Durkin.

Inspired by a pastoral letter written in 1975 by Catholic bishops from Appalachian states, Roberta went to work for the Wheeling-Charleston diocese after earning her master's degree in religious education. Over the next two years, her friendship with Sister Kathleen deepened while they traveled and taught adult religion classes in small towns around the state. 

In the fall of 1976, she entered the Sisters of St. Joseph and moved into its mother house the following June. 

On the morning of June 13th, 1977, 26-year-old Roberta had spent the last eight days in her convent in Wheeling, West Virginia, in silent retreat contemplating her final vows to become a nun. She grabbed an apple out of the kitchen and then with bible in hand, walked to a nearby hill behind Mount Saint Joseph to pray and meditate. Why she was kneeling down to pray, Roberta was attacked, raped, then strangled to death by hand and left near an overturned park bench. Her brutal rape and murder occurred within earshot of the Speidel Golf Course, but no one there heard a thing. 

A caretaker discovered Roberta's body behind an overturned bench at 2 p.m. Investigators found no signs of defensive injuries, and they determined Elam had been incapacitated.

Her death followed the then-unsolved slayings of four other young women over the previous seven months in adjoining Washington County, prompting Pennsylvania State Police to consult with investigators in Wheeling.

West Virginia State Police homicide investigator Don Shade was called to lead the investigation two weeks after the murder. By the time he saw the murder scene, cigarette ashes were all over the place, and the chances of obtaining any forensic evidence were slim. An area of nearby weeds remained mashed down, indicating the killer had lain in wait for her. It was determined that Roberta's killer very strong and crushed her larynx. Police obtained blood samples from everyone they could think of and questioned hundreds of people, including a drifter trying to hop a train and members of a Georgia-based salvage crew who had been working on telephone poles in the area.

A drawing was released of a white man in his 30's, with dirty, dark hair, bushy eyebrows, a mustache and a beard who had been seen near the Mount St. Joseph grounds. They sought but never found a rusty, gray or faded-blue Chevrolet or Buick, festooned with religious and coal-mining bumper stickers, that had been parked on nearby Pogue's Run Road.

People who knew her were eliminated. And despite all the leads that were followed and the DNA evidence collected from the scene, the case went cold.

Since her case was reopened in 2001, there are new witnesses and suspects. Similar crimes committed elsewhere or by serial killers have also been looked at. The genetic profile contained in the DNA sample from Roberta's killer was submitted to the nationwide DNA database known as CODIS.

The killer's DNA profile was also directly taken to more than 170 individual labs that do DNA testing for law enforcement agencies. They asked the labs to compare that profile with other DNA samples they've collected that did not meet requirements for entry in the CODIS system but remain in unsolved-case files. They did this in case someone had a partial DNA profile that doesn't meet CODIS standards.

There is a possibility that there was two killers. 

Convicted murderer Eugene Blake was considered after Department of Corrections documents exposed the distinct possibility that Blake may have been roaming around the Wheeling area in the mid 1970's when he was serving life without the possibility of parole in the state penitentiary at Moundsville. However, DNA evidence was not linked to Blake. Authorities said that they also believed that a second killer could have been with him at the time.

A local man, John Shoplak, had been eliminated in early in the original investigation as well. His blood-type didn't match the killers. However, he knew details of the case that had never been made public. At the time of the murder, Shoplak’s former girlfriend told investigators that her ex “did not like Catholic people,” and that he had once tried choking her. The two broke up the month before Roberta was killed.

Shoplak's daughter said that despite his beliefs that he would have never attacked anyone.

Shoplak had also been accused of raping two girls, but allegedly he was protecting the real perpetrators and took the rap.

He was convicted of robbing his grandmother. In the process of the burglary, Shoplack cut off his grandmother’s finger to steal a ring and wrapped a telephone wire around her neck to stop her from screaming. 

One of Shoplak’s former friends told the Wheeling police in September 1977 that Shoplak had attacked and murdered a nun near Oglebay Park. Shoplak allegedly said he had approached her from behind and used a belt to strangle her. He had then allegedly told his friend that she was on her period or was a virgin and got blood on him.

Shoplak died in 2019 and the authorities are trying to track down his DNA from the hospital he was in before he died.

Anyone with information about Miss Elam's killing can contact Lt. Cuchta at 304-234-3741 or Sgt. Swiger at 304-329-1101.