Heartsong: Murder tears apart two free spirits

Keith Morrison Correspondent • Profile

It was a time - or so it seemed - of endless possibility. Drop out, grow a beard, call yourself a hippie. Invent life all over again. And maybe, if you were very, very, lucky, you'd answer your door one day, and find yourself looking at the love of your life.

Bob Heartsong: I-- I looked in her eyes. That was the first feature I looked at on her. And her eyes just-- like I've known them all of my life. Or all my lifetimes.

Ah yes, kismet. It was 1973.

Bob Eckhart was 29 then, and temporarily caretaking an old mansion in Miami Beach. And she - the girl with the eyes - was a 24-year-old named Toni Soren.

Bob Heartsong: My jaw drops to the floor. This-- this-- this just absolutely incredibly beautiful woman is at the-- my front door.

She asked him if she could park her car in his driveway. He invited her in. They talked. The rest of the day. All night.

Bob Heartsong: We just found so much in common, so much spiritually-- we found in-- in each other.

Keith Morrison: So she shared this early feeling.

Bob Heartsong: Everything was open. Every door was open.

She moved in that very night. A day and a half later, they had an unofficial wedding ceremony.

Keith Morrison: A day and a half later?

Bob Heartsong: Day and a half.

We wrote a paper between us and God that-- said that we were, you know-- this is it. Seven months later, they made it official. An actual marriage license.

And she was, for the young Eckhart, a soul mate and in some ways a savior. Because he'd been lost.

Keith Morrison: You went off the rails a bit.

Bob Heartsong: I got involved with somebody. Loaned a kid some money. Got a little close to what he was doing. And-- got-- I was arrested for-- conspiracy to-- pos-- possess and distribute cocaine. And pled guilty.

He spent four and a half months in prison then. Which, in retrospect, he said, wasn't such a bad thing, really.

Bob Heartsong: Became a vegetarian the day I walked in. I walked in weighting 220 pounds. Walked out weighing 160. Just changed my life. I read a lot of-- Herman Hess. Siddhartha. Just opened my eyes.

Keith Morrison: You-- you're one of those guys who-- actually got scared straight in a good way by the system.

Bob Heartsong: I don't want to say "scared."I just looked at it and I said, "This is not me. What am I doing?" So I said, "I've gotta make a change."

And, lo and behold, there was Toni. She was orphaned at 16, became a free spirit, a wanderer.

Linda Armstrong: This is a person that went out West and lived I-- in-- I guess it was a small house without running water and-- I mean, she was just an adventurer.

This is Toni's friend, Linda Armstrong. Toni and Bob's friend.

Linda Armstrong: How would you describe Bob? Hippie, very passive-- easygoing. Toni was more the standing up, would, you know, say whatever she was thinking.

Here is what they were like, said Linda, here's the sort of thing they did:

Linda Armstrong: They went to Hawaii and I said, "Oh, I mean, that must have been wonderful." She said, "Until they realized that they spent all their money getting to Hawaii and had no way of getting back." So they lived on the beach. That's the kind of person. She was just ready for anything.

They decided that the ancient practice of female name shifting, women taking the husband's name, ust wasn't appropriate anymore. Not for them, anyway.

Robert Heartsong: She just wanted something that was ours. So we made "heart," out of "Eckhart," and we made "song" out of "Soren," and we put" heart" and "song" together and we were Bob and Toni Heartsong.

Heartsong? Yes, that was what they decided to be. And they even went to court and made it official.

A son Elijah was born, then another, Jacob. They settled in Florida. Discovered that for all their hippie notions, they were natural entrepreneurs. They started a business promoting tofu. Toni wrote - and designed - a tofu cookbook. Bob discovered a talent for high-end landscaping, which evolved into a business creating expensive pool and waterfall installations throughout southern Florida.

Linda Armstrong became their accountant.

Linda Armstrong: I've got a lot of couples that have businesses together. And they do raise their voices.

But that's something Bob and Toni never did. Bob always kissed Toni before he left. He never, ever forgot to kiss Toni goodbye. And in the years and decades that passed, said Bob, they retained, somehow, the soul of the hippie couple they once had been.

Keith Morrison: If you can give me the sort of state of your marriage-- the state of your life, in 2000.

Bob Heartsong: It was fabulous at that time. I mean, I often said, "I-- I live in nirvana."

And then it was September 26, 2000. Bob got up at the usual time, went to work in the usual way. A pool installation in Del Ray beach, about 40 minutes from their home in Jupiter. Toni went to the grocery store, and then to the bank. They'd arranged to meet around 3 pm at a Del Ray auto dealership. They were buying a car.

Bob was there at 3. No Toni. He called, no answer.

Bob Heartsong: I'm starting to get a little worried.

Keith Morrison: Why were you concerned about not being able to reach her on the phone?

Bob Heartsong: Because--we talk all the time.

It was 5:00 p.m. when Bob Heartsong parked outside his house and walked past the carefully landscaped greenery to his side door. And that was the moment. Imprinted now on his brain. There she was.

Bob Heartsong: I find her laying on the transom of the door. And I look and I'm, like, I'm, like, in shock.

911 call:

Bob Heartsong: She's been beat by somebody. Blood is all over. She's got no pulse. She's cold. Oh my God, Oh God. I need help.

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