Olympic Athlete Commits Murder/Suicide

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Olympian's Suicide Note Blames Failures For Killing Wife

LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas -- In a suicide note made public Wednesday, a former Olympian wrote of being haunted by perceived failures and blamed at least some of them on his wife, whom he's believed to have stabbed to death before killing himself.

"I have worked so hard in this lifetime and to fall short on many occasions has been hard," the note written by Robert Howard begins.

Howard, a medical student and 10-time NCAA champion in the long jump and triple jump at the University of Arkansas, was a two-time Olympian who never won a medal. He failed in his third attempt to make the U.S. Olympic team for this year's games.

Howard, 28, jumped from a 10th-floor dormitory room window at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences early on Aug. 8.

Police investigating his death discovered the body of his wife, Dr. Robin Mitchell, in bed at the couple's duplex, covered with a blanket. Mitchell, who was the chief neurosurgery resident at UAMS, had been stabbed numerous times in the head and torso the night before.

Only one sentence in Howard's rambling, handwritten, unsigned suicide note mentions Mitchell: "Robin really screwed my life. She made me feel like I was worthless and could not speak the English language well."

University police, after closing their investigation into Howard's death, released their case file Wednesday. Little Rock police are investigating Mitchell's death, and Sgt. Terry Hastings said officers are awaiting toxicology and forensic test results before closing their case.

"We believe he is the one who killed her. We just have to prove it," Hastings said.

Howard went to the hospital after the slaying, and was first noticed by registered nurse Jack Chris Lafont, who in a statement to police said he told Howard how to open a double door, to which Howard answered, "Oh, OK, thanks."

A short time later, university police - following a trail of blood dripped from several cuts on Howard's hands - found him in a 10th-floor dorm room whose occupant was out of the country.

Officer Johnny Wallace wrote that Howard, "who was covered with blood and was wearing blue hospital scrubs, yelled 'YA' and came toward us in an aggressive manner." Wallace pulled his gun and ordered him to stop, but Howard pushed him and a fellow officer out of the room and shut the door.

Wallace wrote that he heard the sound of breaking glass, and by the time he got back in the room, Howard had jumped.

Howard was accepted into medical school in 1999. Time off for Olympic training left him two years behind, but he remained in good academic standing. Mitchell, who met Howard in early 2003 and married him that May, was months away from finishing her neurosurgery residency.

The suicide note enumerates only one of the failures Howard alluded to: the failure of his first marriage.

"I have had real love (Jennifer) but have lost it. I really loved her but she was not ready for that," he wrote.

Catherine Kelly, a friend of Mitchell's, said Wednesday that Mitchell never let her friends or mother, who lived next door, know of problems in her relationship with Howard.

Kelly described her friend as driven, ambitious, hard-headed and successful.

"All those things were traits that we, as her friends, appreciated in her and cherish, and it's frustrating for those of us who knew her and loved her to know that she married someone who, in the end, hated those things about her," she said.