After 30 years, Bucks County prosecutors have made an arrest in a Croydon mother’s murder

A Bucks County man was arrested Wednesday in a 1991 murder that has confounded prosecutors for decades.

Robert Atkins, 56, of Fairless Hills, has been charged in the death of Joy Hibbs, a 35-year-old mother of two who was strangled and stabbed in her Croydon home. Atkins, prosecutors say, was a neighbor who occasionally sold Hibbs and her husband small amounts of marijuana.

On an April afternoon in 1991, Hibbs and Atkins were at her home on Spencer Drive when they got into an argument over money, prosecutors say, and he strangled her with a power cord from a computer and stabbed her five times. He then set a fire, which spread quickly and destroyed much of the evidence linking him to the crime, investigators said.

Atkins’ attorney, Craig Penglase, did not return a request for comment. In addition to murder and robbery, Atkins was charged with arson.

Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub said the “power of persistence and sheer force of will” led to Wednesday’s arrest.

“Robert Atkins, for the past 31 years, has been living free but on borrowed time,” Weintraub said. “Today, we begin to collect on that time, with interest.”

For years, Hibbs’ family hoped for answers. Last year, her husband, Charlie, dipped into his retirement savings and offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. Family friends later added money, doubling it to $50,000.

After The Inquirer published a story about Hibbs and the reward last May, the investigation into her death was reopened and referred to a grand jury.

Charlie Hibbs, speaking Wednesday morning from his home near Seattle, said news of Atkins’ arrest was bittersweet.

“It does bring relief, and I do feel good after all these years,” he said. “But it also brings me sorrow. This hurt my family really bad.”

The couple’s children, David and Angie, said in a statement Wednesday that the “immense grief and suffering” the family has endured over the last three decades will never disappear.

Weintraub praised the family for holding out hope. He said they always suspected that Atkins killed Hibbs, and pushed for the case to be more closely examined.

Atkins was long considered a suspect, but for years, investigators said, they did not believe there was enough evidence to charge him. Atkins has denied any role in the crime. In testimony before the grand jury, he admitted selling marijuana to Hibbs, but said he had no involvement in the murder. The grand jury, after hearing testimony from law enforcement officials, along with Hibbs’ neighbors, friends, and relatives, concluded that he was the killer.

Atkins was among those investigated early on after neighbors reported seeing his Chevrolet Monte Carlo parked in front of Hibbs’ home on the day of the crime. But he told police he and his wife, April, had been away in the Poconos, where they spent two days at a motel.

The grand jury, in its 40-page presentment, suggested that detectives initially may have been reluctant to pursue Atkins as a possible culprit because he was working as a confidential police informant in drug cases at the time.

Years later, April Atkins, then divorced from her husband, told police she had not been with him at the time of the crime. In 2016, she went to Bristol Township police and said that on the afternoon Hibbs was killed, Atkins came home “covered in blood” and told her “he had stabbed someone and lit a house on fire.”

In testimony before the grand jury, April Atkins said she regretted waiting so long to tell the truth. She said she initially lied because she was afraid of her ex-husband.

Weintraub, in announcing the charges Wednesday, said while that new information was not enough on its own to make a case against Robert Atkins, it helped guide investigators as they pushed to solve the crime.

Another piece of the puzzle fell into place when David Hibbs told the grand jury Atkins had threatened his mother weeks before her death after she complained about the quality of marijuana he had sold her and demanded a refund. In response, the son said, Atkins told his mother, “I will blow up your house and I will kill you.”