Episode 138 Robert ‘Robbie’ Lamp
In 1981, 27 year old Robert Lamp, or Robbie as he went by seemed to have a lot of things going for him. He was a young husband and father, and had recently purchased a home in a great neighborhood in Pennsylvania. Robbie was a successful manager of a Grand Union Super Market; in fact, he has done such a great job, that the company asked him if he'd work at their store in Hillandale, Silver Spring, MD- a store that was in need of a good manager to help run it. It was a good opportunity for Robbie, but since he has just settled his family in Pennsylvania, he decided that he would travel back and forth from Pennsylvania to Maryland instead of uproot his family.
By March, 1981, Robbie had settled in to his position at the new store alongside his co-workers, but a violent robbery of a Safeway store just down the street in which a store manager was shot, was on Robbie's mind. He requested security guards from corporate for the store, but his request was denied. Robbie instead had to rely on his training which taught him that in the event of a robbery, to fully cooperate and hand over the money in order to keep himself, his employees, and customers safe. Unfortunately, on March 27th of that year, Robbie's Grand Union store was robbed, and despite cooperating fully with the robbers, Robbie was shot to death as he lay helpless on the floor alongside store employees and customers. His killers fled from the store and escaped, leaving Robbie's family to deal with the aftermath.
Later that year, Police connected two men to not only Robbie's murder, but to the earlier Safeway shooting, and other crimes. Arrested were 22 year old LeRoy Jenkins and 25 year old Jerome Dudley. Robbie's family assumed that justice would be done and Robbie's killers would be in prison for the rest of their lives. Years later, they were shocked to find out that the suspects in Robbie's murder had never even been indicted for murder in Robbie's case, and although one of the two suspects had died, the other was still alive and was a free man. Robbie's brother Olen Lamp set out to get to the bottom of what happened. He sought out and teamed up with Tom Ponton, who was a co-worker of Robbie's and was on the floor next to Robbie when he was killed. Together, Olen and Tom filed FOIA requests, and sought out the help of reporter Paul Wagner of NBCNews4 out of Washington DC in an effort to shine a brighter light on just what happened and how suspects in Robbie's murder case were able to somehow slip through the cracks. To date, Robbie's murder case remains officially unsolved, and no one has been prosecuted for it.
In this episode, you'll hear from both Robbie's brother Olen who discusses how his brother's murder affected their family, and his efforts to get justice. You'll also hear from Tom Ponton, Robbie's co-worker who walks us through the tragic events of that fateful night in March 1981, and how he came to team up with Olen to find out the truth.
If you have any information about the March, 1981 murder of Robert 'Robbie' Lamp in Silver Spring MD, please reach out to his brother Olen at the Facebook page he runs for the case, or to reporter Paul Wagner at NBCNews4