Just before daybreak on a Tuesday in February, Robin Lee Welshons answered a knock on the door at an Aberdeen motel room and was shot several times at close range. The 35-year-old mother of three, who was two days away from beginning an 18-month prison sentence, died in the doorway.
According to police, the motel operator replaced the bloodstained carpet and made the room available for customers the next day.
Welshons' last-ditch attempt to salvage a life riddled with depression, drugs and arrests had led her here. In an effort to reduce her prison sentence, Welshons had worked for the Drug Enforcement Agency as a confidential informant, family and friends say, helping conduct drug purchases involving dealers as agents watched and listened in.
FOR THE RECORD - A caption to a photograph that accompanied an article in Saturday's editions of The Sun about the investigation into the shooting death of an Aberdeen woman incorrectly described the assistance that a Cecil County man gave to the woman. The man, Rex Allen Hodge, provided support to Robin Lee Welshons, but he did not take her in.
The Sun regrets the error.
Nearly a year after her death, however, those close to her have received little information from police about the investigation.
"I feel like nothing has been done, because she got killed for working with the system," said Welshons' mother, Mary.
Rex Allen Hodge, who has no blood relationship to Welshons but watched over her like a daughter, has offered $10,000 for information leading to an arrest, but police have not taken him up on the offer.
Though prosecutors, police and DEA spokesman refused to comment, a source familiar with the investigation who insisted on anonymity confirmed Welshons' involvement as an informant. Police have a suspect but lack the evidence to charge him, the source said. The suspect was taken into custody a day after the killing - on charges stemming from a three-month drug purchase involving a DEA informant - but was later released, the source said.
In life, Welshons frequently tormented those close to her. First it was her mother, who disapproved of Welshons' lifestyle as a teenager - smoking, drinking and hanging out with boys - and kicked her out of the family's home. Then it was Hodge, who raised her like his own and provided bail when she got tossed into prison, only to revoke it when Welshons showed up at hearings haggard and inebriated. It ended with her children, who friends say could not count on their depressed, drug-addicted mother to pick them up from school or help with homework.
But Welshons' killing and the unanswered questions after the crime torment her survivors even more.
"I am angry, and I am in shock," a childhood friend, Tammy Budkey, said at a small funeral service for Welshons in February.
