Serial killer Phillip Jablonski’s crimes continue to haunt victim’s daughter

EXCLUSIVE: Yolonda Robinson-Vann still remembers the haunting nightmare that tragically came true.

“I remember I went to sleep and had a dream that somebody was going to kill my mother,” she recalled while speaking to Fox News. “She came in my room, running in there, and said, ‘What’s the matter?’ I said, ‘Mom, somebody is trying to kill you.’ That was a few months before my mother’s life was taken away.”

The matriarch, Fathyma Vann, was murdered by Phillip Jablonski in the spring of 1991. Robinson-Vann became an orphan at age 19.

Jablonski, a convicted serial killer whose five victims included two wives, is the subject of Investigation Discovery’s new documentary, “The Serial Killer Among Us: Phillip Jablonski,” which airs Thursday night. It features interviews with investigators associated with the case, loved ones of the victims, as well as Jablonski's macabre audio where he details his horrific bloodlust.

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The special is part of the crime and justice network’s “Serial Killer Week,” where audiences can tune in each night and watch original programming that takes a closer look at some of the most infamous and seemingly forgotten murderers from over the years. Robinson-Vann said she participated in the documentary to make sure her mother’s name wasn’t forgotten with time.

Vann, 38, of Indio, Calif., was attending the same community college as Jablonski at the time of her death. Robinson-Vann was also attending college when she went to meet up with the matriarch. It was then that she encountered her mother's sinister classmate for the first time. That meeting occurred just a few weeks before she had her nightmare.

“She was standing next to him,” Robinson-Vann recalled. “She introduced me to him. And immediately, without even saying, 'Hi,' to him, I said, ‘If something happens to my mother, I’m going to come looking for you.’ He says, ‘Well, you don’t have to worry about me doing anything to her. You should worry about her doing something to me.’ And I said, ‘Well, we shouldn’t have a problem. ‘Cause if you don’t mess with her, she’s not going to mess with you.’”

That first meeting didn't sit well with her.

“Just the way he stood there and was looking at my mother, there was just something about him that didn’t sit right in my stomach,” she added.

Sadly, Robinson-Vann’s intuition turned out to be right.

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Jablonski offered to give Vann a ride home from class on April 22, 1991, according to court documents.  The next day, her body was found off the road in the desert outside of Indio. The cause of death was a gunshot wound, but Vann's body was heavily mutilated with stab wounds. Abrasions on her back appeared to state “I love Jesus” with a heart-shaped incision in place of the word “love.”

When Jablonski was later arrested for another murder, a belt was found in his car that had the handwritten names of his victims, along with their death dates. It also contained Vann’s name. In his audio diary, Jablonski described in graphic detail how he sexually assaulted, murdered and mutilated Vann.

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“My mother was a people person,” Robinson-Vann tearfully described. “She wanted to give us a better life. There was nothing this lady wouldn’t do for you… What happened to me was devastating. My kids always wanted to know about their grandmother. But when you go online and put her name in Google, his face pops up. And you have to remember, I had a conversation with this man. I felt like I was given a warning and I hate the fact that I didn’t listen. I still wonder, had I not told him anything about messing with her, would she still be alive today? Or was he already plotting to kill her? I live with that."

But Robinson-Vann also pointed out that the system had failed her. Before her mother’s murder, Jablonski had a long history of violence against women starting with an attempt to kill his first wife in the 1960s. At the time, he was an Army sergeant who had served two tours of duty in the Vietnam War before he was discharged in 1969 for a “schizophrenic illness.” He pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder, assault and attempted rape of his second wife, Melinda Kimball, in 1978.

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In 1990, Jablonski was paroled for good behavior, despite having tried to strangle his own mother with a shoelace during a prison visit in 1985. In 1994, a San Mateo County jury sentenced him to death for the first-degree murders of his wife Carol Spadoni, 46, and her mother, Eva Peterson, 72. Spadoni had married Jablonski while he was in prison for murdering Kimball.

Authorities said Jablonski recorded himself in cassette tapes describing shooting, stabbing and mutilating Spadoni and her mother. He then raped Peterson after she was dead. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but a jury found he was sane at the time of the slayings.

Jablonski was also implicated in Vann’s death, as well as Margie Rogers of Thompson Springs, Utah.

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“This man, who had committed such heinous crimes, was somehow released back into society, allowing him to commit even more crimes, including the murder of my mother,” Robinson-Vann explained. "And these serial killers, they become celebrities in jail with pen-pals writing to them. What about us? Nobody reached out to me and asked if I was OK. I couldn’t even get back some of the items that were found around my mother because they somehow went missing. No one ever said, ‘You should speak to someone.’ Nobody cared. Where do the loved ones of victims go when a tragedy like this strikes you?”

“Phillip Jablonski went to prison for killing people and they released him,” she said. “What requirements did he really meet when they let him out? Until we clear up the justice system, the families of victims are going to continue to suffer.”

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In 2019, Jablonski died on California’s death row. The 73-year-old was found unresponsive in his San Quentin State Prison cell and pronounced dead within minutes.

Robinson-Vann said Jablonski’s death isn’t enough to make her feel that justice has been served.

“Where’s the justice?” she asked. “We cannot forget about the victims and their loved ones. That is why I am speaking out in this documentary, so many years later. That pain has never left. I am still struggling today. The closest that I’m getting to hope is people actually talking about this so that change can somehow happen.”

“The Serial Killer Among Us: Phillip Jablonski” airs Thursday, Sept. 3 at 9 p.m. on ID. The Associated Press contributed to this report.