Just before daybreak on a Tuesday in February, Robin Lee Welshons answered a knock on the door at an Aberdeen motel room and was shot several times at close range. The 35-year-old mother of three, who was two days away from beginning an 18-month prison sentence, died in the doorway.
According to police, the motel operator replaced the bloodstained carpet and made the room available for customers the next day.
Welshons' last-ditch attempt to salvage a life riddled with depression, drugs and arrests had led her here. In an effort to reduce her prison sentence, Welshons had worked for the Drug Enforcement Agency as a confidential informant, family and friends say, helping conduct drug purchases involving dealers as agents watched and listened in.
Nearly a year after her death, however, those close to her have received little information from police about the investigation.
"I feel like nothing has been done, because she got killed for working with the system," said Welshons' mother, Mary.
Rex Allen Hodge, who has no blood relationship to Welshons but watched over her like a daughter, has offered $10,000 for information leading to an arrest, but police have not taken him up on the offer.
Though prosecutors, police and DEA spokesman refused to comment, a source familiar with the investigation who insisted on anonymity confirmed Welshons' involvement as an informant. Police have a suspect but lack the evidence to charge him, the source said. The suspect was taken into custody a day after the killing - on charges stemming from a three-month drug purchase involving a DEA informant - but was later released, the source said.
In life, Welshons frequently tormented those close to her. First it was her mother, who disapproved of Welshons' lifestyle as a teenager - smoking, drinking and hanging out with boys - and kicked her out of the family's home. Then it was Hodge, who raised her like his own and provided bail when she got tossed into prison, only to revoke it when Welshons showed up at hearings haggard and inebriated. It ended with her children, who friends say could not count on their depressed, drug-addicted mother to pick them up from school or help with homework.
But Welshons' killing and the unanswered questions after the crime torment her survivors even more.
"I am angry, and I am in shock," a childhood friend, Tammy Budkey, said at a small funeral service for Welshons in February.
For all her troubles, Welshons is remembered by friends as brash and fun-loving, a bigger-than-life personality who could put others at ease.
But too often she found trouble easily. Welshons was arrested several times, and her problems escalated in 2004, when authorities tracking her fiance, Timothy Eugene Fisher, on suspicion of drug and weapons trafficking were led to her brick-front, two-story townhouse in Belcamp.
During a November 2004 raid, officers from a county drug task force swept through, a report of the incident shows, recovering packaged bags of cocaine, a stash of semiautomatic rifles and pistols, and stolen prescription drug forms.
One of many police photos taken during the raid shows a man sitting on top of 26 bags of cocaine. Another depicts Fisher lying down on a bed, his hands shackled behind him. Yet another shows Welshons, her right cheek pressed against the floor as a few strands of hair, sprung loose from her ponytail, rest on her grimacing face.
As police make their way around the top floor, the photos show, there are more people to round up. One of them is Welshons' daughter, 13-year-old Brittany, sitting on a couch with another girl.
The last photo shows 5-year-old Tyson, the son of Welshons and Fisher, tucked in bed with his hands clasped across his chest in fright.
In two handwritten letters sent from jail, Fisher asked Circuit Judge Emory A. Plitt Jr. to consider expediting his bail hearing, pleading that the family was in danger because of his arrest.
"I will say there are some major things involved [sic] please do what you can," Fisher wrote.
Fisher's case was sent to U.S. District Court, where he pleaded guilty to a weapons charge last August. As she awaited trial, Welshons went back to drugs and Tyson was placed in a foster home in Bel Air, said Budkey. Hodge, who had covered Welshons' bail, withdrew the bond - sending her back to prison - after she appeared at a court hearing inebriated.
Yet for the first time, Welshons seemed to snap out of her yearlong funk, Budkey said. In prison, Welshons became involved with a program that assists women at the Harford County Detention Center in getting their lives back on track.
Though not ordered by the court to participate, Welshons was "very positive" during the sessions, said Phyllis Doolittle, the program's coordinator, and showed a sincere desire to change her life. At the urging of her children, Hodge bailed her out.
Still facing the possibility of 20 years in prison, Welshons was willing to do whatever she could to reduce her jail time. Robin's mother, Mary Welshons, said Robin agreed to work with police as an informant to identify drug dealers she had formed relationships with through Fisher.
"She had nothing to do with [the drugs and guns] - it was all me," Fisher said in a September phone interview from a federal prison in South Carolina. "But they kept putting it in her head that she would be found guilty of certain charges. She said she was worried."
With a sentencing date set, Robin was to receive 18 months in prison, according to her public defender, Kelly Casper. In a week, she would be sentenced. In a year and a half, she would be out of jail, ready to move to Florida with Tyson and start over. But the plan was cut short.
Aberdeen police, who are handling the investigation, refused to comment for this article. Police Chief Randy M. Rudy said there was "no movement" on the investigation but made a reference to "complications involving other agencies." The county's Crime Solvers, which pays for information leading to an arrest in high-profile crimes, is not offering a reward for the capture of a suspect because Aberdeen police have not asked them to, according to law enforcement coordinator Lt. James Eyler of the Harford County Sheriff's Office.
As months passed, Hodge, who was divorced from Welshons' mother before Welshons was born, stepped forward with money from a savings bond he had set up in Welshons' name, payable to her upon his death.
A mild-mannered former General Motors employee, Hodge said he has lived modestly, and has saved and invested for years. He said he could think of no better use for the money than finding Welshons' killer.
"I could cash it, but why do it? I do not need it. If it would solve [the case], it would be well worth it," Hodge, 68, said recently.
But he says he never heard back from Aberdeen police. Rudy said he was not aware of the offer.
Since the killing, Mary Welshons said she has had trouble eating and sleeping. She has visited Robin's grave almost every day, sometimes chatting with the pastor who roams the grounds to console family members of the deceased.
Frustrated with police response, she has visited Aberdeen City Hall dozens of times to try to get answers. She contacted a lawyer, hoping to force the city to provide her with more information about the investigation, and even tried reaching out to a daytime talk show to tell her story.
"Robin said, 'Everything will be all right,' but it was never all right," Mary Welshons said. "She went way over her head."
justin.fenton@baltsun.com