TRINITY NICOLE ROBINSON - 18 yo (1993) - Homestead FL

For 17 years, Kathy Thompson has believed Christopher Michael Phillips was involved in her daughter’s disappearance.
This week, she will travel to Miami to testify against him in a
second-degree murder trial, which begins Monday in Miami-Dade County
Court.
Trinity Nicole Robinson was 18 when she was last seen on May 10,
1993, in Homestead, Fla., only months after she and Phillips relocated
from Burlington to south Florida to find work in the aftermath of
Hurricane Andrew. Phillips reported her missing the next day.
“It was the way he acted when he came back from Florida. He just
acted guilty. He tried to put my younger daughter in a car. He said he
would show her what he did to Trinity. He had a butcher knife,” Thompson
said. “He lied to police then, when he reported her missing, when he
told them he didn’t have a way to get in touch with Trinity’s family. He
had called me hundreds of times.”
Phillips, now 38, was extradited to Miami-Dade County from his
Huntsville Lane, Whitsett, residence in 2006 on charges that he killed
Robinson.
Thompson is nervous about testifying and also about what she might
hear about her daughter’s disappearance and alleged murder. Despite 17
years of searching, investigators never found Robinson’s body. Thompson
fears hearing graphic details about what might have happened to her, and
said Florida investigators warned her some of what she could hear might
disturb her.
“They tell me not to worry. I’m trying to put my faith in them, but
it’s difficult to do that because it’s been 17 years,” Thompson said.
Investigators with Miami-Dade police and Miami-Dade County prosecutors couldn’t be reached for comment on this story.
The case was investigated as a missing-person case but went cold when
no new information came after investigators talked to roommates and
co-workers. Miami-Dade police reopened it as a homicide investigation in
2000, claiming they had new information about Robinson’s disappearance.
At the time, Detective Ray Hoadley, with Miami-Dade police, said he
was investigating rumors that Phillips had abused Robinson. The case was
reopened as a homicide because it had been seven years since anyone had
seen or heard from Robinson, he told the Times-News.
Phillips told police and others that Robinson walked to work carrying
her waitress’ uniform early the morning of May 10, 1993. He reported
her missing on May 11, after, he says, Robinson didn’t show up for work
and didn’t return home.
Robinson returned to Burlington twice between December 1992 and May
1993. The second time she went home, she hitchhiked. Work was scarce and
Robinson and Phillips were struggling to get by, living out of cars and
tents, Thompson said. Her daughter phoned in May saying she wanted to
come home permanently.
Robinson was waiting on a $7,000 insurance settlement check from
North Carolina, then she was going to buy a bus ticket north. Thompson
recalls her daughter saying that Phillips was abusive.
In 2006, Phillips said people were spreading vicious rumors about
him, that he loved Robinson, that the couple rarely argued and that he
never abused her. There aren’t court records indicating violence between
them.
Two men convicted of killing several women in Florida after Hurricane Andrew had killed Robinson, he believed.
Phillips blamed shoddy police work for letting the case go cold,
saying that he walked the streets, talked to friends and acquaintances
and did everything he could to find her in the weeks after Robinson went
missing in 1993.
According to a 2006 Times-News story, Phillips failed a lie detector
test in 2000 when Florida investigators began questioning him.
Phillips was convicted of assault on a female in 1996 and in 2000. He
has been married twice. Just before he was arrested and extradited in
2006, his wife, Jennifer, had given birth to their first child.