Naman Shrestha
Between 1994 and 1995, two teenagers — Robin Murphy and Josette Wright — in Carmel, New York, went missing under mysterious circumstances. While the former was never found again, the latter’s remains were discovered months after her disappearance. In the middle of both cases, the suspect eventually turned out to be Howard John Gombert Jr., who was convicted of sexual assault in an unrelated case. His possible involvement in the crimes is explored in the episode titled ‘Hiding Beneath the Surface: The Putnam County School Girls’ of ABC’s ’20/20,’ with the help of detailed interviews with officials linked to the cases.
Howard John Gombert Jr. Was Considered a Possible Suspect in Robin Murphy’s Disappearance
On June 28, 1963, Howard John Gombert Jr. was born to Howard Gombert Sr. and Sharon (née Corey). His first run-in with law enforcement was recorded in his late 20s when he was charged with first-degree rape twice. Having been accused of rape in 1991, his case was reportedly dismissed after the alleged survivor recanted her story. A few years later, Howard began dating one of Robin Murphy’s friends, while working at a coin-operated laundromat in ShopRite of Carmel. So, when Robin suddenly went missing from the same shopping center on April 9, 1995, the police eventually interviewed Howard, who was recovering at Danbury Hospital after trying to take his own life by overdosing on sleeping pills just five days after Robin’s mysterious disappearance.
He admitted to talking to Robin for a few minutes to get some advice about his relationship. Howard told the detectives, “I thought Robin could talk to my girlfriend for me. We talked for 5 or 10 minutes. Then she said she was going to visit her boyfriend, make a phone call to someone named James, and then come back. I never saw her again.” He denied knowing anything more than that. In a few years’ time, Howard had begun dating another woman, with whom he resided in her New Milford, Connecticut, home. On February 29, 2000, the police received a 911 call about a domestic dispute between Howard and his girlfriend. He was arrested on site, and the officers searched his car. Besides being charged with sexually assaulting the girlfriend, he was also accused of sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl.
Not long after arresting him, the investigators conducted a search at his girlfriend’s house and recovered multiple women’s underwear and other questionable items stored in Ziploc bags inside a tan suitcase. When one of the pairs of underwear turned out to be Robin Murphy’s, Howard was interrogated. He reportedly failed to provide a valid explanation for it, denying that he had obtained the underwear from Robin. He was eventually convicted of sexually assaulting his girlfriend and an 8-year-old girl in Connecticut and sentenced to a total of 30 years in prison.
Howard John Gombert Jr. is Awaiting Release From Prison in Late 2026
While Howard John Gombert Jr. was incarcerated, one of the detectives investigating the disappearance of Robin Murphy wrote to him, pleading with him to reveal her location. The detective wrote, “I really believe that you considered Robin Murphy to be a friend of yours. But I also believe that something went terribly wrong that day.” Howard continued to maintain his innocence in the case. A few years later, he was also linked to the horrific killing of a 12-year-old girl named Josette Wright, as a few witnesses alleged that they saw Josette in Howard’s car on the day she went missing.
Moreover, his fellow inmate told the authorities that Howard had opened up about having sex with Josette on the night of her disappearance and also talked about how the police could never find Robin Murphy. As a result, Howard emerged as a person of interest in Josette’s murder case, especially after the exoneration of Anthony DiPippo and Andrew Krivak, the original suspects who were falsely convicted and spent two decades in prison for the crime. As of today, the 63-year-old convict is serving his sentence in the Cybulski building of the Willard-Cybulski Correctional Institution in Hartford County, Connecticut, with his release date scheduled for December 28, 2026.
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