The clock is ticking on solving a 5-year-old Philadelphia homicide | Helen Ubiñas

Even after she joined the unenviable fellowship of families of murder victims, she hoped things might be different.

She stood shoulder to shoulder with mothers whose children’s killers walked free, and lifted her voice to speak her son’s name: James Walke III.

She sat in cramped courtrooms in support of families, still hollow no matter the verdict, and prayed for the day when whoever murdered her son would face their own judgment day.

Wherever the opportunity existed to remind whoever needed reminding that Walke was loved by a family who would never give up, Yullio Robbins was never far, never wavering in her faith.

“Never in a million years would I have imagined that his murder would still be unsolved five years later,” she said.

Her grandchildren, Walke’s 15- and 13-year-old sons, are daily reminders that time is passing. But for Robbins, it’s still Feb. 23, 2016.

On that day, Robbins’ 28-year-old first-born son was shot 12 times on a Germantown street in the middle of the day. People saw — and said nothing.

She’s marched up and down the street regularly urging witnesses to come forward.

“Please, what if it was your son? What if your son is next?”

She’s stapled fliers to utility poles seeking information, and when they are inexplicably torn down, she quietly puts them up again.

She takes the lessons of grieving mothers who came before and uses them to keep her son’s death from being buried under other unsolved murders: In 2019, families staged a three-day protest against unsolved murders outside police headquarters. A local activist, Ikey Raw, dedicates his time to highlighting and trying to solve cold cases. More than half the mothers in a local support group, Mothers Bonded by Grief, are also bonded by the unsolved murders of their children.

Meanwhile, Robbins considers the passing and promise of time.

Maybe, hearts will soften. Maybe, fears will subside.

Maybe one day when her grandsons ask if the person responsible for killing their father has been caught, she can say more than: “No. He’s still out there. But I’m always going to search for him. I’m never giving up.”

Maybe all the time she and Police Detective Gregory Santamala, and his partner, Robert Hesser, have dedicated to trying to find answers will pay off — even if things aren’t promising right now.

“God bless her, she’s been out there constantly, and that has helped,” Santamala said. “People recognize her and that case, so that keeps things alive. But we’re not getting anything new.”

Where other families express frustration with detectives, Robbins has never questioned the commitment of Santamala, who, from the start, has promised he’d do all he could to find whoever was responsible for killing her son.

It’s all he can promise.

“Even when the cases go to court and the person is convicted, [the families’] lives are never the same,” Santamala said. “It’s tragic, and this is the part that people don’t see. People don’t see what’s left of the families, the brothers, the sisters. Their lives are never, ever the same. Never.”

Still, he works every angle, and, like Yullio, keeps the faith that something will change, that maybe one day someone will speak up, even if only to save their own hides.

“I’ve worked enough cases where all of a sudden out of the blue we’ll get that phone call to say, ‘Detective, somebody here says they have information,’ so I’m always hopeful.”

But even he concedes the clock is ticking. He’s been on the job for 31 years. And no matter how much he wishes and works to solve the case, his retirement might come first.

If it does, Robbins hopes the next detective shows as much care and dedication to solving her son’s murder.

While she’s nowhere near giving up, she too has pondered what might happen if time runs out.

“Before I close my eyes, I would love with all my heart for my son’s murder to be solved,” she said.

And if it’s not, “I’ll just go to heaven and meet James and tell him I tried my best.”