Hi everyone, sorry that I'm so late coming into this thread. (Also this post will be long so sorry in advance lol). I recently learned about this case from my friend, whose dad was very close friends with Robert Stonebreaker. (My dream job is to be an investigator one day. lol. She told me about this case because she was curious to hear what my opinion was. She told me about how sweet Robert was and how her dad has always been heartbroken that whoever did this hasn't been caught). My friend told me that her dad believes the wife (Pamela) did it in order to get insurance money, but she said her dad only feels that way because that's what the cops have said. (Her dad tends to take anything law enforcement says as complete 100% gospel truth...lol.) My friend went to their home many times over the years and said that Robert was the sweetest guy and that he and Pam never showed any indication of issues and always seemed to be a happy family. But she did acknowledge that of course people can always put on a façade so she isn't sure what to think. This is also over 12 years old so she admits her memory might be faulty. But I did my own research on this case and it's so crazy I'd never even heard of it, because I used to live in Rancho Santa Fe up the street from where it happened. (Then again, RSF was kind of a creepy area and it seemed like a lot of shady stuff was going on under the radar out there. I miss the scenery but not the weird people).
I apologize if some of these questions have been answered or if it seems redundant. I read this thread but like I said, I'm new here and may have missed something. Some things that stood out to me/questions I have:
1.) There is a picture of the car Robert was driving that night that was posted online on his brother's website (
https://robertstonebreakerrewardfund-com.webs.com/). I was actually kind of surprised at how minimal the damage appears to be. Well, it's definitely banged up but the articles made it sound like the car was completely trashed/totaled as the CHP originally suspected someone died in it, so I expected the car to be in a much worse condition. The picture shows what looks like maybe a bad fender-bender, but I'd never see that and assume someone died in it. (I had a relatively minor fender-bender years ago; no one was hurt, and even my car looked worse than Robert's Porsche from that night). Not sure if law enforcement ever revealed this, but was his Porsche a manual transmission?? I would think it was. I ask this because I'm wondering (and this is just speculation) that if it's possible that Robert was going to that house at Paseo Delicias for whatever reason (I'll get to my theory/question on that in a minute) but maybe he parked on the side of the road like that for lack of parking spaces, didn't want to be seen, etc. (again, all speculation) and maybe he accidentally left the car in neutral gear after parking it and it rolled off into the embankment after he'd walked up to the house? It would explain the minimal damage and why there was no blood in the car or any sign of anybody having suffered any trauma in the car. The car's condition certainly doesn't look like the result of someone swerving off the road in a panic. So it's possible that the crashed car was completely separate/irrelevant from the murder itself, and maybe law enforcement has put too much thought into trying to connect the crashed car to the murder and that's why it hasn't been solved??
2.) I noticed that LE seems very intent on the wife being behind it, and of course anything is possible, but it seems really sloppy/lazy to me that LE would just go with the typical "oh the wife did it for insurance money" theory and not really explore other avenues. Maybe they did, but from all the research I've done, I haven't seen LE implicate anyone else besides Pam, his wife. The only information I can find is that she tried to get the life insurance money very shortly after he died, but while this may seem suspicious to some, it really isn't proof of murder. Robert bought those policies years prior so it's not like she went and got life insurance on him and the next day he was dead. The life insurance-motivated theory seems like the cookie-cutter answer and it almost seems like LE has no interest in solving the case unless they can find a way to fit the facts into their theory. They complain that Pam won't talk to LE anymore & has lawyered up. Yes, I can definitely understand why this is strange and that it's odd someone wouldn't want to help LE as much as possible to find the killer of their loved one. But, on the other hand, think about all the times innocent people have gone to prison because they tried too hard to be helpful and didn't realize until it was too late that police had tunnel vision on them. In those cases, suddenly everyone is saying, "Well s/he should've gotten a lawyer! Don't talk to police! Get a lawyer!" So either way she's going to be criticized. They act like if you get a lawyer, you're guilty, but if you don't, you're stupid. People will have things to say regardless, so you might as well pick the option that is legally beneficial to you.
Also, is someone practicing their 5th amendment privilege really an excuse for not solving a case? We all have the constitutional right against self-incrimination and they want to tell us that invoking that right suddenly makes the cops incapable of doing their job? If that's the case, then we really need to re-think who we are electing to enforce the law. But I digress.
3. Were the residents at the home where Robert was found dead ever looked into? This thread is the only time I've seen the residents even mentioned. It's very strange to me that LE sort of just seemed to completely buy the story that the dude who lived at the house gave them... that he found Robert in his driveway that morning with no idea what happened. My friend who told me about this case was shocked when I found the picture online of where Robert's body was found. She had always assumed he crawled for help from a crash and that he was hit over the head as he reached the driveway, and that he was found at the beginning of the driveway by the street. (This was what the cops had told her and her dad). She was surprised when I showed her that Robert was actually found at the top of the driveway near the garage, past the locked iron gate (which would've been practically impossible to climb over, if not really difficult, and yet somehow this dude in the house didn't hear or see Robert who was presumably screaming and running for help while struggling to climb a gate, and didn't see a maniac chasing him with some sort of object that he smacked Robert with over his head, hard enough to kill him, and somehow ran off undetected). Mind you, the dude in the house, Michael Reed, was a retired personal injury lawyer who would very likely know how to talk to cops in a way to divert suspicion off himself. He mentioned having used Robert's veterinary services; I wonder if it's because it would look too suspicious for him to be like, "I have absolutely no idea who this man is!" so indicating a minimal familiarity maybe makes him seem less suspicious?
I did a search of that house through public records and found that the lawyer who lived there, Michael Reed, is/was married to a woman named Helen Lacey Reed who is bigtime into horseracing.
Rancho Santa Fe resident overcomes adversity to win national equestrian title - She'd gone through a bit of a dry spell apparently from 2007-2010 due to depression (according to the article) and interestingly after Robert's death, her depression subsided. This might be a long shot but could this possibly have anything to do with Robert's father-in-law, Pam's dad Leonard Blach, who, just before Robert's death was the winner of the Kentucky Derby and had a race horse worth millions that Del Mar was trying to get?? Leonard was also allegedly tied to an illegal bribery (
Report: Mine That Bird Owner Tied to Scandal) - was someone maybe angry with him and took revenge on him by inviting Robert, his son-in-law, over to the house and killing him? (just a guess). Or another guess is he invited Robert over and something went wrong, and the smack over the head was possibly an accident/heat of the moment thing so they panicked and came up with the idea of "finding him" in the driveway? I just find it very weird that Robert, the son-in-law of a famous horse-racer with a horse in high demand, just happens to end up dead in the driveway of a lawyer whose wife's horseracing career was deteriorating and suddenly flourished after Robert was killed. Again, just a theory, but I'd be curious to hear what people think, and again my apologies if these points have already been addressed. Thanks for reading.
thecoastnews.com
won’t let me delete it.)
