Bill John Cline Jr, a 58-year-old white male, was a longtime resident of Porter, Oklahoma, where he made his living as a painter and settled into a modest home on Belaire Avenue. On the first day of April 2014, that quiet routine was shattered when gunfire echoed through the small town, drawing the attention of law enforcement and neighbors alike. A Wagoner County deputy on patrol heard shots from the area and was soon flagged down near Cline’s address, a one-story house at 533 West Belaire
that sat in an otherwise unremarkable neighborhood. Inside that home, officers found Cline dead from gunshot wounds, the victim of a sudden burst of violence that turned an ordinary afternoon into a crime scene.
The events at the house were quickly described as a family disturbance gone terribly wrong. When deputies arrived, two of Cline’s nephews, brothers Maxx and Skyler Robinson, were still at or inside the residence. One of them, Skyler, had helped draw the deputy to the scene and told authorities he had been in the yard and had not actually seen the shooting, which he said took place inside his uncle’s home. Both young men were detained as investigators tried to piece together what had happened in those crucial moments before the deputy arrived. In the early reports that followed, the shooting was framed as a domestic conflict that escalated with terrifying speed, ending in Cline’s death on his own living-room floor.
As detectives worked through interviews and physical evidence, their focus narrowed to Cline’s nephew, Maxx Tate Robinson, a combat veteran in his early twenties who had served in Afghanistan. Within weeks, Robinson was formally identified as the primary suspect, and a warrant was issued for his arrest on a charge of first-degree murder. When Wagoner County deputies took him into custody on that warrant, he was ordered held without bond, the killing of his uncle described in public documents and news accounts as a deliberate act of violence rather than a tragic accident. Another nephew, Skyler, was arrested on suspicion of obstructing justice, but it was Maxx whom prosecutors ultimately pursued as the man they believed had pulled the trigger.
Court records later revealed the competing narratives that emerged as the case moved toward trial. Prosecutors alleged that Robinson shot and killed Cline on April 1, 2014, inside the Porter home, and they pressed forward under a first-degree murder filing. The defense, in turn, painted a picture of a troubled relationship behind closed doors, arguing that Robinson believed he was acting in self-defense. In those filings, Cline was described as having a reputation for becoming violent when he drank, and records note that he had been drinking on the day he was killed. That claim, set against the prosecution’s portrait of an intentional killing, framed the emotional core of the case: whether the gunfire that ended Cline’s life was a cold-blooded crime or a desperate response to perceived danger.
The legal battle stretched on for years, with hearings, motions, discovery disputes, and repeated trial settings as both sides prepared to confront each other in a Wagoner County courtroom. Jury selection finally began in June 2017, signaling that the long-delayed trial was truly at hand. But as the reality of presenting the case to a jury approached, Robinson agreed to a deal that would spare him the risk of a murder conviction. He entered a guilty plea to first-degree manslaughter, a lesser but still serious homicide charge. The court sentenced him to fifteen years, with all but five years of that term suspended, meaning a portion of the punishment would be served in custody and the remainder under supervision.
For Cline’s family, the plea and sentence marked the end of a long and painful legal saga but not the end of their grief. Public memorials remember him as a working man and veteran whose life was cut short in the very place he should have been safest. The house on Belaire Avenue, once simply the address where he lived and worked and welcomed relatives, is now indelibly associated with the night his life ended. The story that began with gunshots in a small Oklahoma town closes in the hushed formality of a courtroom, with his nephew accepting responsibility for his death, leaving behind a family divided between love for the man who was lost and complex, lingering feelings about the one who took his life.
