Robert Robbins, 19, was living with his girlfriend Katherine Mestites in a trailer near Apache Junction, Arizona, in October 1973 while trying to resettle after service in the U.S. Army. Two drifters, Douglas Edward Gretzler and Willie Luther Bill Steelman, arrived in the area with Marsha Renslow and stayed intermittently at the trailer. The visitors were later linked to a string of robberies and murders in Arizona and California.

According to a later confession attributed to Gretzler, on the evening of October 24 Robbins was strangled from behind with an electrical cord and then shot once in the head; his body was hidden under a mattress. Mestites was killed the following evening, shot in the head while at the trailer. Neighbors reported the two men left abruptly in the early hours of October 26; Robbins and Mestites were found on October 28 after concerned friends alerted authorities.

Witnesses identified the men as Bill and Doug; Marsha Renslow later named them as Willie Steelman and Douglas Gretzler. Arizona warrants for robbery and fraud were issued November 1 and investigators linked the pair to the Phoenix killings. Does anyone have information about Robbins’ life in the Apache Junction trailer park or remembered seeing unfamiliar visitors there in October 1973?