"If you were to meet Robin, you would be her friend for life."
Debbie O'Malley and Robin Pope had been friends for more than two decades, before Pope's death.
In the 11 years since then, O'Malley has worked hard to keep her friend's memory alive.
"She was just a very outgoing, bubbly, energetic kind of person," she recalls. "A mom, a wife at one time, and she was a good friend to everyone."
It was Robin's deep and large number of friendships that had police hopeful they'd be able to solve her murder.
"You know, Robin had a lot of friends, Robin had a great network of people," Queen Anne's County Sheriff Gary Hofmann explained. "She was well known in Queen Anne's County, she was well known in Annapolis. And we're hoping that somebody has that one little piece of information that can help fill that timeline in."
O'Malley and Hofmann took us through that timeline.
"So it was a Friday night, March 1 [2013]. I had texted Robin before I left work," says O'Malley. "I didn't hear anything back from her until about 8:00. She sent me a message that she was.. going on a job interview and then she was going to go have some drinks with some friends."
"So around around 10:30 at night, Robin Pope had called her husband Wayne, and advised that she was going to be coming to the house to get some personal belongings," Sheriff Hofmann says. "Around 11:30 that night, Wayne had woke up, had noticed that Robin was there in the yard, and decided that he was going to leave the residence."
O'Malley says Wayne came by looking for Robin about an hour later.
"It was around 12:30, my daughter came upstairs into my room and said that Wayne was at the house and he was looking for Robin. Had I seen Robin?" she recalled. "Robin was staying at a condo that belonged to my daughter, so he asked if we had a key to it, could he go over and check the condo?"
O'Malley's daughter took Wayne to the condo, but Robin wasn't there.
"And then they came back, and Wayne came to the door with my daughter and he just said I don't- I don't know what to do," says O'Malley. "And I said, 'Well, go home and call the police.'"
She already had a bad feeling.
"I closed the door and looked at my daughter. I said, 'He did something to her, I know he did something to her,' I could feel something was not right," O'Malley says.
Wayne did return home to call the police and report Robin missing.
"Around 2:00 in the morning, we received a call that Wayne had come back to the house and that Robin was now missing," continues Hofmann. "What he noticed was that all her personal belongings were still there, her car was still there, purse, cell phone, all those different items that she had were still there, but there was no Robin and there was also no Bella."
Bella was found on March 2, dead on the rocks near the water, at a neighbor's house.
"I thought the worst of course," says O'Malley. "You know? Something wasn't right... I think I knew instantly Robin was gone."
It would be another three weeks of searching before O'Malley's feeling was shown to be true.
Robin's body was found by a fisherman on March 23, very decomposed.
By this point, the Maryland State Police had taken the lead on the case, at the request of the Queen Anne's County Sheriff's Office.
"They had the resources that they could deploy very quickly to do this, and then would make it a much quicker process for us, it would streamline things, we wouldn't have to get search warrants in other jurisdictions, they could go ahead and do that," explains Hofmann.
Maryland State Police confirmed that this is their case.
They've told WMAR-2 News they're investigating Robin's death as a homicide, with the cause of death determined to be drowning.
Her friends, and her family, are desperate for answers and closure.
O'Malley made a plea for anyone with information to share it with police.
"Just to please tell the truth.. Robin's daughters deserve it. They deserve the closure. Something really bad happened that night and I believe someone knows. Possibly more than just one person. Just tell the truth. Please," she says.
If you have any detail, no matter how small, about the night Robin Pope disappeared, please call the Maryland State Police Centreville Barrack at 410-758-1101 or the Queen Anne's County Sheriff's Office at 410-758-6666.
