Arkansas medical school deaths of husband and wife doctors is apparent murder-suicide: police

Jet, Sept 6, 2004

Details of former-Olympian Robert Howard's suicide--and his slain wife--are still puzzling Little Rock, AR, police.

Howard, who made the Olympic finals in the triple jump twice at the 1996 Atlanta Games and again in Sydney in 2000, was a third-year medical student. He recently had been spotted late at night in blood-covered scrubs on the seventh-floor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. A few minutes later university police were notified that someone was trying to get into rooms on the 10th floor of a dormitory next to the hospital, school spokesman Leslie Taylor said.

Once in the dormitory, officers followed a blood trail to the room where they found Howard barricaded. By the time police were able to get in, the window was broken and Howard had jumped to his death.

When police went to tell his wife, Dr. Robin Mitchell, that her husband had committed suicide, they found her body stabbed nearly 50 times.

Officers also found a two-page, handwritten note from the 28-year-old Howard that police said was neatly written in the beginning but, by the end, was illegible.

"It was just a note from him saying he was sorry for the mistakes he made in his life and some things about his family," Sgt. Terry Hastings said. "There's not a mention in there that he killed her." Yet, investigators are calling the deaths a murder-suicide.

"This may be a case that we never know," Hastings said. "Probably, the two people who can tell us are dead."

Mitchell, 31, was chief neurosurgery resident at the medical school's teaching hospital and herself a track star in her hometown of Newburgh, NY.

Howard was a star athlete from Shea High School in Pawtucket, RI, and was a 10-time NCAA champion at the University of Arkansas, earning titles in the indoor and outdoor long jump and triple jump. He went on to finish seventh and eighth respectively in his Olympic appearances.