Facebook/Twitter Robin Spielbauer and Jeremy Spielbauer
Robin Spielbauer was 32 years old when she was shot and killed on April 8, 2014, in Amarillo, Texas, her body found near her car by the side of the road. The mother of two was described as a “loving daughter, mother and friend” in her obituary. It stated, “Robin was a friend to everyone she met and her smile would light up a room.”
According to court documents, Spielbauer’s death was deemed to be the “result of a love triangle gone wrong” involving her ex-husband, Jeremy Spielbauer, who she married in 2005. Several years into their marriage, the relationship began falling apart after he began an affair with Katie Phipps. In 2012, Robin Spielbauer and her husband divorced and the following year he married Phipps, court documents show.
However, the new marriage also experienced difficulties as Phipps soon suspected that Jeremy Spielbauer was having an affair with his ex-wife Robin. According to court documents, “Robin and Katie’s relationship was acrimonious, and, at times, their relationship boiled-over into physical altercations.” Then, in the midst of this situation in April 2014, Robin Spielbauer was found murdered just outside Amarillo, Texas.
Spielbauer Was Shot & Killed & the Investigation Soon Narrowed In on Her Ex-Husband’s New Wife, Katie Phipps
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Spielbauer’s body was found on April 8, 2014, on a dirt road in Randall County, near Amarillo, Texas. The autopsy results revealed that she “had suffered blunt force trauma and had been shot in the back of the head,” court documents explained.
The investigation soon turned its focus toward Phipps as forensics determined that her pink gun was the murder weapon. “The investigation revealed that pink plastic pieces found at the scene and pink smears transferred onto the window of the Tahoe matched a pink gun owned by Katie,” these documents showed.
Authorities also heard that Spielbauer and Phipps had a bad relationship, and Phipps herself later testified to that effect, saying the two women had a physical altercation at Thanksgiving in 2013. Phipps said she’d found “flirtatious” messages between her new husband and his ex-wife, Amarillo reported. Phipps was arrested on murder charges shortly after Spielbauer’s body was found.
It Wasn’t Until a Year Later That Authorities Turned to Spielbauer’s Ex-Husband as a Suspect
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More than a year after Phipps’ arrest, she was ruled out based on her cellphone records, which showed she wasn’t at the crime scene when Spielbauer’s murder took place. Since Phipps was unable to make bail, she spent 466 days behind bars at the Randall County jail, KFDA wrote.
Instead, experts discovered that Jeremy Spielbauer’s cellphone was the one near the crime scene at the time of his ex-wife’s murder and his car was caught on video surveillance near the area and around that time, court documents reveal.
These court documents also indicate that investigators looked through text exchanges between Jeremy and Robin Spielbauer and found that the two had made plans to meet that night at the same location where Robin Spielbauer’s body was later found. A grand jury was presented with the evidence and indicted Jeremy Spielbauer on capital murder charges.
Prosecutors said Spielbauer used his wife’s gun to commit the crime because he knew that authorities would link it to Phipps, Amarillo reported. The district attorney said while Phipps stuck with her story from the beginning, Jeremy Spielbauer’s story “has never stopped changing,” KFDA wrote. He was arrested on April 16, 2016, and went to trial on January 15, 2018.
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