Episode 192: Robert Breton
In the early morning hours of December 13th, 1987, 50-year-old Robert Breton Sr. entered his ex-wife JoAnn’s Waterbury, Connecticut apartment while she was sleeping. 38-year-old JoAnn Breton had been renting the apartment since she and Robert divorced just 11 months earlier. The two had been married since 1967 and had just divorced that past January. JoAnn and their son, Robert Breton Jr., who was 15-years-old at the time of the divorce, had moved to their two-story apartment shortly after their separation.
Robert had spent the evening at the Sears Castaway Lounge in Waterbury having several drinks. He arrived at 10:00 p.m., had multiple drinks, and then introduced himself to a woman named MaryJane Modeen. The two spent the next few hours talking and dancing until the bar closed. At 2:00 a.m., Robert then drove MaryJane in his truck to his apartment. While inside, Robert’s mood quickly changed and he told MaryJane he needed to go somewhere else. He then drove her home and dropped her off at around 2:45 a.m. Rather than going back home, Robert then drove to JoAnn’s apartment. He entered, climbed the stairs to JoAnn’s bedroom and went inside. Robert then approached her with a 5-inch knife while she was still asleep and began savagely beating and attacking her. JoAnn, having been woken up by this, was stunned.
She was able to get out of bed and away from Robert, stumbling across the room and screaming for help, but he ran after her. Robert continued to beat her and stab her in her face, neck and chest before he stabbed her through her neck, the knife entering from one side through to the other, which cut the carotid artery. JoAnn and Robert’s son, who was now 16-years-old, woke up from all of the commotion and frantically ran into JoAnn’s room. His father turned around to face him and then began attacking him with the knife. Suffering from multiple defensive knife wounds to his arms and hands, Robert Jr. tried to run down the stairs. As he reached the bottom, Robert Sr. caught up to him. He started stabbing his son repeatedly.
Robert Sr. then left the apartment, calmly went to work, and returned to the apartment the next day with his friend and coworker Domenic Aurigemma. Robert had approached the apartment door, but turned before he could open the door and walked back to Domenic, appearing alarmed and telling him that he saw blood on the doorknob. Domenic verified this and the two men called police. When officers arrived, they gained entry to the apartment from the building’s superintendent and found a horrifying scene.
At the bottom of the stairs, where his dad had left him, was Robert Jr.’s body. He was only in his underwear as he had been sleeping before the attacks. His head was propped against the wall, and officers could clearly see that he had been fatally stabbed in the neck. He had been stabbed multiple times in his face, arms, and chest as well. JoAnn’s body was found in the upstairs bedroom. Bloody shoe prints were found all over the apartment and down the stairs, and there was also significant blood splatter all over the walls and floors. Police immediately looked into Robert, especially as he and JoAnn had been divorced for less than a year. Due to his bizarre behavior, the next step was to have Robert undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
The psychiatrist, Walter Borden, had been retained by the office of the chief public defender to perform a forensic psychiatric evaluation during Robert’s first penalty phase hearing. Walter interviewed Robert as well as multiple other family members. At the second penalty phase hearing, Walter shared an incredibly detailed report on Robert’s upbringing, trauma and mental state all the way up to the murders. His interviews took place until Robert’s conviction in 1989 for both murders.
Walter testified in court that Robert suffered immense and chronic child abuse. He was placed in an orphanage when he was just a year old, and when he was returned to family he was extremely underweight, dirty, mute and did not want to be touched at all. His father, Roland Breton, was an alcoholic who was incredibly abusive and threatened to kill Robert on multiple occasions. His mother Hazel was also an alcoholic who would turn to sex work to fund her drinking, which Robert was aware of at a young age. Hazel was also mentally ill, often threatening to harm Robert unless her mother-in-law, Robert’s grandmother Eva, gave her money. On one occasion, Hazel killed and dismembered the family’s pet cat and then put the body parts all around the house for Robert, who was still a small child, to find. When Robert began puberty, Hazel would make sexual advances towards him.
Despite running away several times, breaking into a neighbor’s apartment so the police would be called and “take him away” and trying to join the Navy, all of Robert’s attempts at getting away from his incredibly abusive environment failed and he was always brought back home. After he failed to succeed in the Navy, Robert moved in with his grandmother and father, and the two men often fought. On December 3rd, 1966, Robert’s dad Roland left the house to go out drinking as he often did. While out drinking, Roland said that the time had come where he was going to kill his son. He then left, burst into the house where Robert and his grandmother were sitting down to eat dinner, and pushed the kitchen table against Robert. He then threw Robert against the wall, and Robert got away and ran into the bathroom while yelling for his grandmother to call the police. Roland then began attacking his mother, and Robert burst out of the bathroom. Robert told Walter, the psychiatrist, that the next events are not clear, but that Robert remembered picking up a knife. He then remembered his dad falling to the floor injured. Robert ran out of the house for help, found a police officer, and brought him to the house, who found Roland dead from multiple stab wounds to his face and chest.
Robert was charged with manslaughter but received a suspended sentence as he was a minor and the judge agreed that Robert likely acted in self defense. Robert didn’t remember stabbing his father, but knew that had to have been what happened. Robert met JoAnn shortly after he killed his father. Within just days of the anniversary of his father’s murder, he and JoAnn married. The relationship was rocky, with Robert having intense jealousy and even paranoia about JoAnn being with other men. Robert lost his job in 1985, turning to drinking heavily after struggling with depression following the loss of his job. On Mother's Day of 1986, Robert got into a fight with JoAnn over which one of their moms to visit, one who was alive and one who was deceased and buried in a nearby cemetery. The fight escalated to Robert yelling at JoAnn that she could leave if she wanted, and JoAnn agreed. The divorce proceedings officially began in July of 1986 and were finalized in January of 1987.
Robert began drinking even more and abusing prescription medications: Fiorinal, a combination of butalbital, which is a narcotic, aspirin and caffeine, and Desoxyn, which is an amphetamine. Both medications are never to be ever taken with alcohol, and Walter Borden testified in court that Desoxyn was the worst possible medication that could have been prescribed because it would have only exacerbated Robert’s already severe depression and paranoia and could trigger violent behavior. He also testified that using the drug in combination with alcohol would be “like throwing gasoline on a simmering fire.”
Things came to a head in December, which was the month of his birthday, the anniversary of his father's murder and what would have been his 20th wedding anniversary. On December 9th, Robert brought JoAnn roses to her workplace, bought her favorite wine, fixed an issue with her car’s registration, brought suitcases to her house for a trip to Florida that she had planned for herself and their son later that month, and did other favors in the hopes of winning her back. On December 12th, Robert was at JoAnn’s apartment helping with an errand and decided to take her keys. Later that evening he went to the bar, picked up another woman, and dropped her off at her apartment early the next morning after unsuccessfully attempting to have sex with her. Rather than go back home, Robert had seen the keys he had taken from JoAnn’s apartment and decided he would let himself inside to talk to her, despite it being 2:45 a.m.
Robert described his own account of the events of the night of the murders to Walter Borden, and he continued to emphasize that he was dissociating, unaware of what he was doing, and hadn’t even recognized his own son until after he had stabbed him. Robert described just wanting to talk to JoAnn, but kept hitting her and beating her “to keep her from yelling.” Walter had testified that as Robert was beating and stabbing JoAnn and Robert Jr., Robert was having a very similar feeling as “the death of his father where he described himself recalling, seeing the hand, his hand and the knife, not knowing what happened․ [I]t's like he didn't feel like he took the knife, he felt like his hand did it. It was a dissociative, it was not part of him.” Robert said on multiple occasions that he kept feeling like his hand that was beating and stabbing JoAnn and Robert Jr. was not part of him and that he wished he could have cut it off.
Robert Breton was convicted in 1989 of two counts of murder and one count of capital felony murder. He was sentenced to the death penalty.
In 1995, the Connecticut State Supreme Court upheld the conviction but overturned his death sentence. They ruled that the jury’s instructions as well as a form they used were too open-ended, and the case was sent back to a lower court for the second penalty phase. State's Attorney John A. Connelly wished to again seek the death penalty, stating “we have to show there was an infliction of pain...above and beyond the ordinary that would have produced the killings."
After lengthy court proceedings and extensive examination of multiple mitigating factors Robert’s legal team addressed, including his abuse of alcohol and prescription medications, his mental state and the murder of his father, the court maintained that Robert would receive the death penalty. He attempted to appeal multiple times and was unsuccessful.
In April of 2012, Governor Dannel P. Malloy signed a measure that eliminated the death penalty for any crimes committed after that date. In 2015, the Connecticut Supreme Court ended capital punishment in the state of Connecticut after ruling it in violation of the state’s constitution. 11 men remained on death row at this time and were individually resentenced. Robert’s convictions were upheld and he will remain in prison for the rest of his life.
Image sources:
stamfordadvocate.com - “In this case, it’s a matter of life or death”