need to add title here

Peace, Love and Murder

January 18, 2009 2:37 PM

Did a peace-loving hippie brutally murder his wife? "48 Hours Mystery" correspondent Harold Dow investigates the tragic tale of Bob Eckhart and Toni Soren.

Read story
Add a Comment See all 15 Comments
by DetectiveDoom July 2, 2012 12:54 PM EDT
This guy uses the whole "peaceful hippie" schtick to hide behind a murder just like murderous pastors kill their wives use their "I'm a peaceful man of god" scams.

Gotta love the fake crying when 48 hours ask him if he loved his wife. Very dramatic Bob...well rehearsed with dramatic pauses, sniffles, and everything!
Reply to this comment
by Randism1 June 17, 2011 7:47 PM EDT
I'm not sure about his innocence, its unfortunate that investigators could handle an investigation so poorly. I think he may have done it but the jurors were right, there just isn't enough to convict. We really will never know who did. All I know is those were the smartest most rational jurors I have ever seen on one of these shows.
Reply to this comment
by Randism1 June 17, 2011 7:02 PM EDT
Being what some would call a "hippy" or being involved with meditation has nothing to do with weather one is capable of murder. The fact that he makes such a big deal of meditation just makes it look like hes putting on an act. If one is really innocent they wouldn't have to make such a big deal about some little part of their life that would make some think they would be incapable of violence.
Reply to this comment
by RMSherin May 14, 2011 11:14 AM EDT
When, on 48 Hours, Bob tells us emphatically he has five (5) witnesses attesting, he was at the Delray job site during the crime, he's obfuscating. The fact is, Assistant Prosecutor Burns failed to dissect the alibi witnesses' timelines, leaving the jury with a hodgepodge of times at a large job site.

Three (3) of the five (5) witnesses who had him leaving after the crime, have him arriving between 10:30 and 11 AM. Bob told police he didn't arrive until 11:30 AM. One (1) does have him arriving at 11:30 but is unable to say when he left. One (1) astutely has Bob's vehicle on the property at 1:15, saying Bob was already there. According to my theory, a white truck was employed in commission of the crime, which witness Carol Parkman testified to seeing in the driveway at 1 PM. So much for alibi witnesses!

During the show (48 Hours), Bob, when coming on the crime scene, demonstrates how he knelt down and lifted Toni's body with both arms, noting her blackened eyes. Trouble is, with a sprung right shoulder socket, Bob had told police, use of his right arm this way was physically impossible.

Bob and Toni Heartsong had a dual relationship: Husband/Wife and business partners in a successful water design and construction business. Bob was the workaholic, perfectionist, the super artist, the master of operations. Toni worked on the inside, handling the books.

But more, she "was a continuing whirlwind of & plans they were working on, and future clients for whom they were creating presentations," wrote Kit Bradshaw of the Jupiter Courier.

Dual relationships, especially those of spouses in business are notoriously rough. Wrote Toni: "The more money we have, the more lonely I am. Bob and I are strangers now. Making love is non-existent." Taken from a January, 1994 entry, her journal evidences the ebb and flow of her feelings to the time of her untimely death.

At trial, Bob could be heard in a police interview, describing how, about 10 days before her murder, he had gone to her with a proposal to make Peter E. Sutton, a long time, younger associate, a full partner. Toni nixed the idea.

Crest fallen, Bob said he left home, drove around and considered suicide. He had reached the point where he was ready to enjoy free time like Toni. And this is where they came to issue, at first in relative silence. As this unfairness became visceral, Bob directed his anger outward - toward the external cause keeping him from the freedom he felt he deserved.

Over the next week, a silent suffering ensued that so characterized the pair, as they kept up pretenses both on the outside and within their own family. On that fateful day, both were playing mental ping pong, one naively, the other dead seriously.

Toni went to the gym for the second day in a row, concealing the fact from Bob by burying the time between Bramen BMW and Burdines. In turn, Bob had a precise plan which hardly included lunch with Toni, something he later suggested in an unmailed letter to Oprah Winfrey.

Near noon he'd leave the Delray job site unnoticed in a white truck while his red Expedition remained parked there. With pinpoint timing, Bob returned to be seen at the site before meeting Toni's 2:45 appointment with Delray Mazda.

Indeed, the moment the Mazda sales girl hung up trying to reach Toni, Bob appeared with the $200 check. Noting that he was moving quickly and trying to reach Toni by telephone, she concluded Bob was there instead of Toni because he happened to be in the area.

According to a state attorney's investigator, five months after the murder Bob told Donald Nix, who had worked for him off and on,"& how happy he was that Toni is dead & and that he has had so much freedom."
Reply to this comment
by RMSherin May 1, 2011 1:05 AM EDT
Good people on this 48 Hours Site, there's a basic flaw in coverage. No way Bob got up, drove to his Delray work site and stayed there even into the early afternoon.

In the Palm Beach County Sheriff's report Bob tells a completely different story. He wakes up, goes to his office several minutes a way, goes to a job site on Jupiter Island until about 10:30 AM, is seen by his Son Eli at Chasewood Shopping Center between 10:30-11:00 AM, and then travels to his job site in Delray Beach. Hardly a guy who gets in his car promptly at dawn, driving the hour down the highway to Delray Beach, the evidence showed he didn't stay there continuously either.

48 Hour producers heard the testimony, read all the evidence. Ordinary stellar, 48 Hours was less in this case.

And that's not the only thing. Since the trial, where he was properly found not guilty because the State didn't carry its burden, the crime is increasingly coming into focus.
Reply to this comment
by No_7 April 21, 2011 12:01 AM EDT
Toni, if you're reading this, you have a civil suit against the city and the police department. Come on, if you're now $400k in debt in legal fees, you should seek a civil suit. There are enough attorneys out there that will take this case on a contingency basis. You were wrongfully accused, imprisoned for 20+ months. For goodness sake man, you have a 1983 claim, false imprisonment claim, perhaps even a cause of action for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Check the statute of limitations on this, and get a free consultation. I am just a first year law student so I can't handle your claim but seriously, Toni, get paid for 20+ you were in jail for. The system has declared you are not guilty, which means you have a claim for the pain and suffering, as well as loss of income you suffered for the city, police department, and state's mistake. Your lawyer when they take this claim, should and will go after the State as well. Like my professor once said "Sue everyone, and sue them for everything you can." Get em' Toni.
Reply to this comment
by DrZin April 10, 2010 10:10 AM EDT
1. Guy's a hippie who has never lost his temper or exhibited any inclination towards violence according to everyone in the world who knew him, even the victim's family. (Except for one possibly disgruntled employee)

2. He's got 5 guys on his work site that place him there all day until about 3, giving him no window of opportunity to duck out for 2 hours to kill his wife.

3. You've got foreign hair "all over" the woman's body that doesn't match anyone in the house.

4. You've got a schizophrenic homeless guy who left the state just after the murder and is in California mumbling about having stabbed "a blonde woman."

5. You've got an unidentified fingerprint on the front door lock and bloody bootprints in the house that don't match the husband.

Anyone who thinks that this guy was guilty is a lunatic.

But what about the DNA you ask?

They're a husband and wife who lived together; how could his DNA NOT be on her? Police are always talking about transfer evidence, how a killer ALWAYS leaves traces of himself just by brushing up against the victim or items in the environment. They LIVED together. Every day they were in contact.

I'm glad the guy got off; there was NOTHING there to incriminate him.

And I don't get Mr. Clean and the jury. 11 out of 12 thought he was guilty? And they let him off? If 11 out of 12 think there was enough there to be assured of his guilt, that, to me, suggests that there was no reasonable doubt. Just proves the very legal principle that the OJ case proved: juries are idiots.
Reply to this comment
by cycology March 23, 2010 11:43 PM EDT
He did killed his own wife.
I do meditate, I do know how to control and manipulate my human emotion. If he would had been asked to pass a polygraph; he would had stayed very calmly "sure" because we are masters controlling what we want others to think or see about our self.
He stayed he pick her up, and saw her face and eyes and did not wanted to remember her like that. (Rage, fire, evil, hatred, victory, and satisfaction) is what that moment speaks of. Now what was he thinking, and probably saying to her at that moment I will leave it to the readers. (he is guilty), but there were to many mistakes by the detectives by providing not enough evidence to convict him.
Reply to this comment
by talita-koomi March 10, 2010 2:41 PM EST
I do not think this man killed his wife; there are too many inconsistencies. For instance, the knife prosecutors say he used, their "tofu" knife. True, no stranger would use this knife when there is a knife block right there on the counter, but then, neither would a husband in a fit of rage. He'd grab the closest thing handy and bash her, or else try to strangle her. She may have heard or seen someone in the backyard and gone to investigate with the knife in her hand because she was in the midst of cleaning it (it WAS after lunch) and putting it away and her attacker then took it from her as they struggled. Also, I don't think his co-workers were mixed up on their dates or times. They would have learned of the murder the day after it happened and like most people would first wonder if Robert had anything to do with it, and they'd be able to recall what they did and when they saw him because it was only yesterday for them. It would stand out because it was a big event and out of the ordinary, like most of us knowing exactly where we were when we heard about the 9/11 attacks. I seriously doubt that he could brutally murder his wife, clean up, & go back to work as if nothing had happened! This is a man with no record and no history of violence.... One other thing, police MUSTt stop assuming that only a person who is intimately close to a victim is capable of making attacks that look like they were done in rage and from built up hatred; this used to always be the case and often it still is in these type of up-close-and-personal overkill situations, but not anymore. There are unfortunately MANY cases now where a person commits this kind of brutal, personal kind of homicide or assault on someone who is an acquaintance or even a stranger. Our society has been de-sensitized to the horror and flat-out wickedness of casually ending a human life. (I am not referring to war,self-defense etc.) Even the "heroes" in TV shows, movies and especially video games kill others as if it's just another day at the office, no biggie. We never used to have problems such as "road rage". Parents, churches, schools and society in general placed a high value on life and taught this most basic of moral values to their children. When I was a teen, my father and I were discussing WWII one day and I was horrified when he told me that some of the Japanese soldiers would throw babies into the air and use them for bayonet practice. I wondered how could anyone DO something like that- and he answered that they did not value human life like we Americans do. This was 30+ years ago....and now I wonder how far down this terrible dark hole Americans will go, and is there anyway to stop the fall?
Reply to this comment
by bluedenmant August 7, 2009 12:26 AM EDT
Early on in the film Bob admits that he picked up his dead wife in a slow fashion, and when he saw her battered face, he gently set her down. At 25:03 minutes in the video the courtroom played back an interrogation interview where they tell him they are having a hard time regarding his blood found on her body (albeit the blood was inconclusive evidence). His response: "...I have no idea or explanation for it because I didn't touch her." My gut instinct is different from the above viewers. I do believe he did this in a fit of rage. Yes, no one ever saw him lose his temper, and therein lies the transparency, because when those types do lose their temper eventually, they really lose it. I think his wife bore the brunt of one such occassion. What I cannot make sense of, in his defense, is the timing. Unless he's St. John Bosco, he cannot be in two places at once...
Reply to this comment
See all 15 Comments
Recent Shows

  • 48 Hours iPad App

    Big changes for the 2012-2013 season! Watch the current week's episode for FREE up to a week after it airs or subscribe for access to all shows, classic episodes and more!