Episode 143: The Murders of Steven and Jamis Lott
60-year-old Steven and 28-year-old Jamis Lott
On November 16th, 2014, 60-year-old Steven Lott asked his fiancé, 61-year-old Robin O’neill, to talk. He told her that he was calling off their wedding. The two had been dating since early 2014 and had gotten engaged in July of that same year, a few months after they started dating. After they started dating, Robin had moved in with Steven into his Townshend, Vermont, home. The relationship had grown strained when Steven began spending a lot of time at the home of a friend and neighbor, who lived part of the time in California and part of the time in Vermont. She had moved back to Vermont in September and the two began spending time together quite often.
Robin would threaten to hurt Steven if he went over to the house and would sometimes follow him over there. She physically hurt him on several occasions, and on October 25th, Robin wrote in her diary that she had hit Steven in the head with a piece of firewood.
On November 15th, Steven went to the neighbor’s house to fix her vacuum and was there for a few hours. Steven’s friend Rob stopped by the neighbors house and reported that he saw Robin drive by six separate times. Later that day, Steven struck Robin multiple times, causing bruises on her arms, legs, shoulder, head and buttocks. That night, Steven went to the neighbor’s house, and her and her daughter noticed that he looked disheveled and scared. He told them that he and Robin had been fighting, and Steven then said that Robin had told him “I’ll fix you” before leaning over to her nightstand. Steven slapped the drawer out of her hands, grabbed some clothes and fled the house. When the neighbor’s daughter asked him what he thought was in the bedside table, he stated “I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to find out.”
The next day on November 16th, Steven asked Robin to move out of the house. Two days later on November 18th, Robin told a number of people that Steven had hit her. In response, her coworker urged her to report it. Robin responded that she “wasn’t going to do that, because it was never going to happen again.” In the afternoon of Tuesday, November 18th, Robin began to drink. When Steven’s friend Morgan came over in the late afternoon, he found Steven, his son Jamis, and Robin sitting and talking in the kitchen area. Steven’s son Jamis was 28-years-old and had been up in the area visiting, and he was sitting in the kitchen talking while he was waiting for his load of laundry to finish. Morgan said that Robin told him that she and Steven were no longer together, then tried to kiss him. When Morgan said no, Robin went upstairs and he could hear her start to break things.
At about 7:00pm that same night, the neighbor and friend received three calls, and each time the caller said nothing and then hung up. One of the calls came from Steven’s phone, and the other two came from a blocked number. Robin made several other calls to acquaintances and her sister, and at 8:48pm, Robin called her friend Mike and asked him to take her dog. He asked what was wrong, and Robin said “I just shot Steve and Jamis.” Mike asked her where they were, and she stated “I did it, I really did it. I just shot Steve and Jamis dead. Steve's by my feet in a pool of blood and Jamis is under the table in his own pool of blood." Ten minutes later, Robin received a phone call from her sister and she told her, "I shot them, I think they're dead, there's blood, there's so much blood. And I don't know how I managed." While she was on the phone with her sister, troopers from the Vermont State Police arrived on scene.
Robin was visibly intoxicated and blew a 0.233 on a breathalyzer. In the back of the police cruiser she recited prayers, asked for red wine and cigarettes from inside the house, and was talking to herself, stating “You can go to prison for the rest of your life, 'cause you killed the motherf*cker.” After she said that she stated “Oops wait a minute, nope, I didn’t say anything.” She also asked the police officers to pull over, take her into the woods and shoot her. When a detective entered the room to question her, she told him that her diary and computer could shed a whole lot of light on the situation. Robin then said that Steven had called off their wedding, then stated "I'm thinking this is something where I need a public defender or something because I've just given you motive."
Investigation revealed that Jamis was shot three times in the head and Steven was shot twelve times, seven times in the head and upper neck, once in the chest and four times in his groin area. Jamis was shot at close range just under a few feet away while Steven was shot over four feet away. Bullet fragments found on scene could not be conclusively matched to a gun, and three separate guns were found at the scene. A swab from the nine-millimeter handgun showed DNA consistent with Robin and Steven’s and a possible third person’s; a swab from the second gun showed DNA that was almost certainly Steven’s but had none that matched Robin’s, and a swab from the third gun showed nothing. No fingerprints were found on any of the guns.
There was no blood found on Robin, her clothes or on any of the guns. There was, however, blood splatter on the floors, walls, and lights hanging above the dining room table. An expert witness testified that he would have expected both forward and backward splatter from Steven’s and Jamis’ wounds, some of which would likely
have gotten on Robin, especially at close range. An expert witness for the State testified that there is usually more splatter in the direction the bullet traveled, and about twenty-six percent of the time a shot yields no back splatter.
An expert witness testifying for Robin said that the kinds of shell casings found at the scene could indicate that more than one gun had been used. He also noted that there were two ladders leaned up against the house, which theoretically could have allowed someone to get into the upper floor of the house and come down the stairs to shoot Steven and Jamis.
Robin was found guilty of the two aggravated murders of Steven and Jamis Lott, and after the trial, she moved for a judgment of acquittal and for a new trial which the court denied. For her appeal, the defense argued that the evidence was insufficient to support the conviction, that her statements to police in the cruiser and the processing room should have been suppressed because they were the product of custodial interrogation after she had invoked her right to an attorney and that those statements should have been suppressed because the police coerced her into making them. The defense also said that Robin was extremely intoxicated at the time and that this would have impaired her aim, but the shooter had shot Steven and Jamis accurately. The court disproved these statements and agreed that there was an extensive amount of evidence as well as motive and that Robin was indeed guilty of the murders.
On June 28th, 2017, Robin was convicted of one count of aggravated murder and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Ellenka Wasung-Lott, Jamis Lott’s cousin and Steven Lott’s niece, was one of many friends and family who had been there for the court proceedings, and she stated “We’re extremely relieved and happy with the verdict. We appreciate the perseverance and dedication of the state’s attorney’s office and the dedication, hard work and diligence of the jury to bring justice for Stevie and Jamis.”
Several years before his death, Jamis had graduated from Castelton State College, where he majored in Fine Art and minored in Writing and Philosophy. He was planning on pursuing his MFA at Champlain College. Jamis was an incredible artist, and in his obituary he is described as having thought that any kind of act can be an act of art: “the way we treat our bodies, how we have an argument, the way we wait for a bus, the style of reaction we apply to situations when people ask us personal questions, and all other expressions of ourselves.” He did some travel puppeteering, held art shows, painted murals and t-shirts, drew cartoons and has done the art for several album covers. Jamis was described as “a great lover of life and the world around him. Whether traveling to India, winter backpacking or splitting firewood, he was a mindful soul, humble, helpful and courteous and genuine in his care for others. Jamis was a fantastic comic, with a quiet, wry yet vibrant sense of humor who attended countless comedy and music shows and festivals with his brothers and their steady entourage of family and friends.”
It seems as though Jamis got some of his art skills from his dad, who was an accomplished woodworker. Steven’s obituary said that he and Susan, Jamis’ mother, ran the family business, Townshend Furniture, for over 20 years. He was described as being a great lover of adventure and being up for just about anything. Steven loved sailing down to the Florida Keys from Maine, pressing cider and going fishing with his sons. He was also a pilot and loved flying through the West River Valley. Steve had a huge garden and would can hundreds of jars of vegetables from the garden for the winter, and his friends and family said that he made the best pickles in all of Vermont. They wrote “He will be missed driving around in his World War II Army Jeep.”
Image sources:
legacy.com - “Norman Steven Lott”
news.com.au - “Robin O’Neill charged with murdering Steven Lott and his son Jamis after calling off their engagement”