September 9, 2020 • 31 mins
Susan LaRosa was 20 years old and already a mom to three young children when she disappeared in 1975. She had dark black hair, cut just above her shoulders. She was petite, 95 pounds. Her husband said she left their apartment one evening to get diapers and baby formula and never returned. That’s the extent of what you’d know about Susan LaRosa if you read about her case in the newspapers. But after years of looking into her story, and speaking with family members who are finally ready to talk, the mystery takes a disturbing turn as a person of interest emerges.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Paper Ghosts is a production of I Heart Radio. Among
the cold cases, twenty year old Susan Lrosa banished on
a trip to a story in Rockville in She was
supposed to go there to get the babies in formula
and to call my mom, who pay phone, and she
(00:20):
never came. Hard. The disappearance of Susan LaRosa has never
officially been associated with the other missing girls. Her face
or her case was never included on those missing person
flyers posted around town. To law enforcement, there was no connection,
(00:41):
maybe because she was more than a decade older than
the youngest of the girls. Still, as an investigator, I
can't ignore facts, one of which is that within a
seven year span, Susan LaRosa became the fourth female to
go missing, not just in the same town, but within
a few miles of one another, and in three of
(01:03):
the cases merely blocks away. I've asked the Vernon p
D if they ever considered these cases the work of
a serial killer. When I hear of disappearances so similar
occurring in the same general location, it's hard to ignore
the potential. But as I began speaking with detectives in
(01:23):
two thousand nine, the year I started my investigation. They
said they had looked at every possibility but discounted it.
I've interviewed serial killers throughout my career, written seven books
about them, and the one common admission they all have
shared is that there are no coincidences when children go
(01:45):
missing within this close proximity, and that you need to
look not only for victim profile similarities, but location, time
of day, and opportunity. One serial killer who I've interviewed
for the past state years insists that when the obvious
presents itself, believe it because most serial abduction cases are
(02:07):
not the work of a diabolical genius or criminal mastermind.
They are committed by a disorganized, deviant, hyper focused on
one goal who will make mistakes. As he's told me,
find those common mistakes and you find your killer. You
(02:28):
can hear him here in an interview I conducted years ago,
as he puts the mindset of a serial killer into perspective.
His name Keith Hunter, Jesperson, the happy Face killer. There's
a wonderment of whether or not I want to kill
or not. I was, I was kind of I'm kind
(02:49):
of wired, maybe a little different than most. Like you know,
most pure killers are not criminals. You understand this right,
explain whereas a serial killer is not necessary a criminal
at all, he's just killer and others I'm not. I
won't go out of my way to rob someone. I
won't go out, I won't do I won't home invade.
I won't do this, of course, p K K. Dad.
(03:10):
But he didn't go in there to rob. He went
in to kill. Our motive is actually just to kill.
Previously on Paper Ghosts, she was with a group of
young men and her friend who was the same age
(03:30):
as her, and they went joy riding. There is drinking involved,
and they decided to throw pumpkins at the window and
we're pulled over and they took Lisa to the state
police barracks. He came over to my house. She um
she wanted to leave my mom and dad and no,
(03:51):
saying that she was very sorry and and you know,
embarrassed that you know, we got in trouble. And at
that point she decided, you know, she was gonna leave
and try and hitchhike home and never made it home.
And I'll never forget it. She came to my house
and a flirt and she said, I wish it was you.
I wish it was a stay. My name is and
(04:20):
William Phelps. This is paper ghosts. The connection between Susan
LaRosa and one of the other missing girls became apparent
to me when I was speaking to Maria Scrow, who
you heard in the last episode. Maria was Lisa White's
(04:43):
best friend and the last person to see Lisa alive
minutes before she presumably hitchhiked home alone. Maria told me
she used to babysit for the LaRosa family. Think about
that for a moment. Lisa White's best friend baby set
for a girl who would herself go missing a year
(05:05):
after Lisa. I had never heard this before, and I
know law enforcement had no clue. Not one detective had
ever asked the question, and to be fair, why would they.
But knowing what I now know, it has to be
considered cold case work is as much about inclusion as
it is about exclusion. Susan was a young mom, just
(05:32):
twenty years old and already she had three young children.
She had dark black hair cut just above her shoulders
Peter Pan style. Susan was petite, four ft eight inches tall,
nine pounds, green eyes. That's the extent of what you'd
know about Susan. Rossa if you read about her case
in the newspapers, But after years of looking into her
(05:55):
story and reviewing documents never before seen by the public,
I knew better than to take anything at face value.
You gotta understand our family was a very, uh fractured family.
There wasn't much love or attention. That's and Prentice one
(06:16):
of Susan Leross's four sisters and was the second oldest,
just one year younger than Susan. My mother only had
attention our time for Sue. So was her child, and
the other children really didn't exist. So she was a
lot of trouble. Sue was into drugs. Sue had abortion,
(06:40):
Sue had overdoses, she had she she would run off
with this guy, that guy she was having sex with
my uncle's she. I mean, it was it was a hellhouse.
And then Sue got married to Robert and she moved out,
and my mo seems to be happy. At that point,
(07:03):
she thought, Wow, somebody took herross night hands and he's
going to make everything wonderful. Robert is Bob LaRosa. Susan
was eighteen when she moved out of her family's home
and married Bob. Throughout my interviews, and research, I've developed
two varying versions of how they met. One person close
(07:25):
to Bob told me he met Susan while she was
in a psychiatric hospital, as he was there visiting someone else.
That same as lots of public reports and other information
I've dug up in Susan's case is false. Susan and
Bob lived less than a mile from each other on
Crystal Lake. There can be no doubt they hooked up
(07:46):
because they were neighbors, which is the version everyone of
Susan's immediate family members agrees with. Ever since Susan's disappearance
in nine, her family has kept out of the a spotlight.
I've spoken to many of them over the years about
when they'd feel ready to talk about what happened to Susan,
(08:07):
and they believe it's now or never forgot about me
and my sister and Terry Shanks's Susan Leros's youngest sister.
What kind of guy is Bob to your sister? Babolo
Rosa was a very um, quiet kind of guy. Their
dynamic was kind of odd, like she uh wasn't the
(08:31):
best housekeeper, wasn't the best cook? She uh? I guess
one time baked cake and it fell apart, so she
scotch taped it together and thought it would be okay.
But you know whatever, she was just a free spirit
kind of gal. Would you say he was a good
husband tour, Yes, I do. I wish he would have
been better in that he would have been stronger and
(08:54):
crushed her when it came to the kids. As far
as her discipline, he was never home. He was always
a single sprat medaling with him. He didn't have a
real job. He and I used to drive around the
Lake and Stafford area and look for scrat medal and
then we go to the junkyard and sell it so
he could put food on the table. Susan and Bob
had two sons, Maurice who goes by Moe and Robert
(09:16):
Robbie Jr. And a daughter, Stacy, the oldest. Each child
is nine months apart. But there was something about Susan's
middle child, Terry says that turns Susan off, that scared her.
Susan did not like the middle child, Robbie, and for
whatever reason treated him the most poorly out of the three.
(09:38):
My sister Sue was not a good mother. She was
She's a horrible mother. Actually, she was an abusive mother.
She didn't know how to love, She didn't know how
to be a mom. These kids were not what she wanted.
They never were what she wanted. And was Bob involved
in drugs to my knowledge? No, to my knowledge he
(10:02):
was not. Would you say she loved Bob in her way? Yes?
I I she had an odd way of Susan was
a brilliant young woman. She was brilliant, but unfortunately she
got involved with heroin. Yeah, that was a demon she
had before she met Robert. So Robert was sort of
like someone that was helping save her. On the day
(10:27):
Susan LaRosa went missing June, her husband Bob told police
Susan left their Rockville, Connecticut apartment in the early evening
to go to the nearby drug store, something she did
every day, and never returned home. I wondered what Terry
recalled from those early days after her sister vanished, feelings, thoughts, memories.
(10:51):
To me, the questions we ask are as important as
the answers we get. A month to the day that
she went missing was her twenty one birthday, and she
always told my mom, on my twenty one birthday, I'm
coming by. The use I'm gonna be streaking. You watch,
you wait for me, You wait for me, I'm gonna
(11:12):
come running by, you know, streaking, being totally buck naked.
That's what that was her plan. So my mom the
whole day sat there, probably smoked three packs of cigarettes waiting.
This kills me never time. But she never came. She
(11:37):
never came, And that's what that's when everything fell apart.
My mother could not she did not have a function.
She did not know what to do, She didn't know
(11:59):
what should too. She didn't know how to walk, she
didn't how to talk, she didn't know how to be.
Susan was her first born, Susan at the same time. Uh,
Susan and my mum went through a lot together. They
(12:20):
were very close. That are very close. Bund To get
(12:43):
a better understanding, I need to take a look at
what happened on the night Susan Rose had disappeared. There
are facts I can report with absolute certainty, facts made
public here for the first time in forty five years,
which begin to not only answer a lot of questions,
but lead me to cluse in several of the other
missing girl cases. For example, I know from law enforcement
(13:07):
documents written the day after Susan went missing that Bob
Larossa told police he and Susan argued because Susan struck
one of the kids. Again, here's Susan's sister, Terry Shanks. Uh.
She went off on a little one and she backhanded him,
split his head open. Kid was bleeding profusely. So you're
(13:33):
talking about the nights she went missing, that that she hit.
She did hit, Yes, she did hit him. In a
police report I've obtained, Bob LaRosa claims Susan hit their
middle child, Robert, who was only eighteen months old at
the time. The injury caused Robert to bleed. The family
(13:53):
has always believed it was a wound to the boy's head,
but police reports confirmed it was his bottom lower lip
and that the cut was not bad at all. This
all happened on the day Susan disappeared. There's no mention
of a head wound. According to Bob, Susan then grabbed
a ten dollar bill and a quarter and left the apartment.
(14:17):
Bob said Susan left their apartment at approximately six thirty
pm to go to the drug store to call her
mother and pick up baby formula. There was only one
drug store nearby, Arthur's Drugs. Susan was there every day,
same time, using the pay phone, buying cigarettes and baby items.
(14:37):
Maria Scrow, the l Rosa babysitter and Lisa White's best friend,
confirmed this detail for me, that Susan would call her
mother every day from a payphone at Arthur's Drugs, just
a few short blocks west of the Larossa's apartment. When
Susan failed to return home, Bob called relatives with no results.
(14:58):
At twelve thirty nine pm the now day, eighteen hours later,
Bob la Rossa called the Vernon p D to report
Susan was missing. He said his wife did not come home,
but he did not want to file a missing person
report yet. It was not until later that same day,
near dark, when Bob decided to file one. The question
(15:21):
is why wait almost twenty four hours later before filing
a report? Going on? What's going on? How are you?
(15:51):
How long you've been How long you've been made your crimes? No,
it's been a toll about six years now investigations. Lieutenant
Bill Meyer has been with the Vernon Police and now
heads made your crimes since two thousand two. He stands
six ft or so and has that familiar buzz cut
you'd expect to see on a cop. Bill is one
(16:12):
of the most practical investigators I know in the Tritown region.
He is unafraid to say when cops have made mistakes
or they go above and beyond, which is something I
greatly appreciate. That kind of honesty and self evaluation is
imperative when reinvestigating cold cases. I've known Bill for a
(16:34):
long time and have an immense amount of respect for
the guy. He stopped by my office one morning as
I was immersed in the cases. We stood in my
garage talking catching up. He explained a few things to
me off the record, putting a new perspective on the
notion that what you read and here online about cold
cases is likely fifty or more bullshit. You really have
(16:58):
to see actual documents and photos to truly understand what
you're working with, and in these cases, those resources, including
interviews with witnesses and family and even suspects, is really
all we have to go on. What's the worst investigation
(17:19):
you've been involved in Inverna Off the top of your head,
I mean, there's there's definitely different ways to categorize worst
the ones that keep me up at night. Yeah, I
mean a lot of the a lot of the child cases,
especially with young children. Is there a lot of sexual
exploitation going on still several months. If we go back
(17:43):
to the sixties and seventies, women families didn't report that
stuff right now. It was a different time. And I
think too, I think they were scared that a police
wouldn't believe them. Uh, certainly their parents wouldn't believe them, right.
And a lot of people have told me that I've
interviewed in all these cases have said, you know, we
were told what happens in this house stays in this house.
(18:05):
You know. Yeah, in the eighties, I mean, domestic violence
really came of age. Tracy Thurman case out in Torring,
tim was kind of one of the turning points in
Connecticut and across the country. The Tracy Thurman case was
a high profile watershed moment in the country with regards
to how domestic violence was viewed. In May three, Tracy
(18:27):
Thurman called the Torrington, Connecticut Police department and reported that
her strange husband had beaten her and was now threatening
the killer. The Torrington police told Tracy to come back
in three weeks when the officer handling domestic cases returned
from vacation. Two weeks later, she called again. This time
(18:48):
one officer arrived and twenty one year old Tracy lay
critically wounded from multiple stab wounds, bloodied in her front
yard as her husband stood over her with a knife.
The husband was not arrested. He even kicked Tracy in
the head in front of the officer. Was not until
her husband tried to assault her as she lay on
a stretcher and was being placed inside an ambulance that
(19:11):
he was finally put in handcuffs. Tracy sued the town.
There was a book and movie made about the case,
and Tracy became the face of domestic violence reform. Bill continues,
explaining it from a law enforcement perspective thirty forty years ago,
in the reality, honestly sickening, police used to handle domestic
(19:35):
violence and just for the warning, you know, and and
they would tell husbands, you know, control your wife, or
I'll go back inside. Don't call us. Now, completely different procedures,
and when mandatory arrests and mandatory refer all the services,
and our focus is really on stopping the cycle of
domestic violence. But it wasn't just men abuse of women.
(20:01):
Subject rarely talked about then, was women abusing men or
wives abusing their husbands. Susan didn't limit her abuse to
just her children. I've learned from her sister and that
Bob was subject to her violence as well. I saw
her crack them over the head with a cast iron
frying pan where he needed stitches, and he didn't do
(20:23):
a thing about it because it just wasn't in him
to do that, And he put up with a lot.
So we know violence was common in LaRosa home, most
definitely from Susan. According to a police report I've obtained
within the year leading up to her disappearance, Susan had
actually stabbed Bob during a heated argument and abused her children.
(20:47):
So if abusers could get away with beating and stabbing
their spouses, think about what else they got away with
inside the home. It was a gruesome discovery, kind of
the last thing loggers widening an interstate here in Burning,
(21:09):
Connecticut would have ever thought they'd come upon. Unlike the
other missing girl cases I've been investigating, Susan Larosa's story
actually had tangible evidence. On May nineteen nine, about three
years after she went missing, construction workers widening Interstate eight
(21:30):
six in Vernon Rockville discovered what was left of Susan's
body in a wooded area off an old logging road.
This was about three point six miles away from the
LaRosa Apartment today, as it was back then, the area
is dense woods and very secluded, the kind of place
where kids in the seventies and eighties held keg parties
(21:52):
and bonfires. I can say, from my experience as an
investigator and someone who has lived in the town most
of my life, who ever dumped Susan le Ross's body
out there knew that area very well. That's not where
you're gonna dump a body if you're not in a hurry.
You know, if if Susan fell victim to a serial killer,
(22:16):
I I don't think that's where they would have founded her.
Retired detective John Collins was the lieutenant in charge of
major crimes for the Vernon Police Department back in two
thousand two. In two thousand four, his department made a
concerted effort to reopen Susan Leros's case. There is arguably
(22:37):
no one else who knows more about Susan's murder than
John Collins. Susan was found fully clothed, her pants fly
was unbuttoned and her zipper down. She had no other
injuries besides a fatal fracture to her skull. She only
had two dimes in a nickel that's twenty five cents
in her pocket. Remember, Bob Larossa told police Susan took
(23:00):
ten dollars and a quarter when she left the house.
He made a point several times, durned several interviews over
the years to say a quarter. Why would Susan have
then two dimes in a nickel on her well? A
pay phone call in Connecticut in cost a dime was
(23:24):
Bob suggesting that his wife had a quarter because finding
two dimes in a nickel on her meant she must
have reached the drug store after leaving their home and
exchanged the quarter to make her daily call to her mother.
Much different from the other missing young girls I've been investigating.
(23:44):
Law enforcement had leads to go on with regard to
Susan's disappearance, mainly a crime scene, albeit secondary because it
was clear to the corner and detectives that Susan was
not murdered at the location her remains were und They
also had a huge bread crumb to follow. The last
(24:06):
person to see Susan alive before she went missing, her husband,
Bob LaRosa. Even though uh, Bob looked like a prime suspect,
you know, we we still we went about it with
an open mind, and the information that we got didn't
(24:26):
really point us in any other directions. Weeks after Susan's
body was discovered, Bob LaRosa was taken into police custody
and questioned for two hours. At the time, law enforcement
publicly stated Bob was not a suspect and foul play
was not a path they were pursuing. It was a ploy,
(24:48):
you know, to make him feel as though he was
helping the investigation, and he was not a person of interest.
But in reality, there were no other suspects besides Bob.
B done the police report, which has not been made
public until now, Bob told police he believed Susan was
not messing around with other guys, but to everyone in
(25:11):
Susan's family at the time, and later, when talking publicly
to the Harvard Current newspaper, Bob starkly contradicted himself, saying, quote,
I was under the impression that she took off with
another guy. She was always flirting with other guys end quote.
They had a very tumultuous relationship. There was cheating on
(25:33):
both sides. There was uh indications of domestic violence, domestic issues,
and as you know, when a woman goes missing and
when a woman turns up dead, if you just blindly
went and arrested the husband, you have a good batting average.
(25:55):
Family members have told me that Susan's emotional mental state
was stable, in her physical condition good on the day
she disappeared, But Bob would routinely chastise his wife's mental
state to her family. He consistently told one story to
police in a different story to family and friends, which
in the eyes of law enforcement, made him a prime suspect.
(26:21):
The truth is inherent, infallible, It does not change. At
one point during that interview, a detective, in what I
think is a brilliant Columbu like move, casually explained to
Bob that if he had, you know, accidentally killed his wife,
it would be considered quote negligent homicide. Bob's response to that,
(26:47):
how much time will I get? An innocent person doesn't
ask that question A hundred times out of a hundred times,
an innocent person does not ask that question. There was
never any official record of Bob being violent with Susan,
But look, I'm far from naive. I've written extensively about
(27:10):
domestic violence cases, many of which have ended in murder
the way it has always been explained to me by
experts as this. In se of murder cases, the victim
knows the murderer. According to the Centers for Disease Control,
over half of the killings of women in America are
related to intimate partner violence, with the vast majority of
(27:33):
the victims dying at the hands of a current or
former romantic partner. Staggering statistics. In other words, when a
wife is murdered, you would hit the bull's eye just
about every time if every dart you tossed was aimed
at the husband. I had asked Susan's youngest sister, Terry,
(27:54):
what she believed happened that night between Susan and Bob,
the night Susan hit her middle child, split the inside
of his lip, and supposedly left the apartment on her
own to go to the drug store. I think that
what happened was eventually, um, he had it. I think
(28:15):
one night he got home from work and should happen.
So the theory the family has is that either Okay,
he went off on her because he couldn't take it
anymore and he was trying to protect his kid. So
he either took a piece of pipe that he always
(28:35):
had in the house because he always collected it and
knocked her with it, or he just knocked her down
and she smashed her head against the tub. Terry then
described what else the family has always believed, because she
did die of a fractured skull. I pointed to my
head and asked where exactly was in the back of
the head, back of the head, back of the head,
(28:57):
because I've heard now front of the head, and now
I hear back definitely back there. Yes, I didn't mention
this during the interview, but I've seen the crime scene
photos which include close ups of susan skull. She had
no injuries to the back of her head. The injury
that killed Susan Larrossa, according to her autopsy report, was
(29:18):
to the front of her head, just above her forehead
on the right side. Susan LaRosa stared at her killer.
She was struck with a fatal blow to her head.
So you think Bob killed your sister. Do you think
he acted alone? In the next step of that, no,
(29:41):
I do not. In the next episode of Paper Ghosts,
I have night tears. I see my mom. She's changing
my one to changing table. She turned around. She sat
my brother in the face, right on the nose, and
(30:01):
it bled, it bled, It was leading. Did your dad
ever have the station wagon? Um? Yeah, um we owned
the station wagon the gentlemen and that was there that
showed up. He has on a red and black checkered
um flannel shirt and he smells even now to this
day at I can't smell that smell without like freezing.
(30:25):
Paper Ghosts is written and executive produced by me and
William Phelps, with help from producer Christine Everett and sound
editing by Pete Cardi from back Room Audio. A special
thanks to Abou Safar and will Pearson from My Heart Radio.
The series theme number four four two is written and
performed by Tom Mooney and Thomas Phelps. For more podcasts
(30:51):
for My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Paper Ghosts is a production of I Heart Radio. Among
the cold cases, twenty year old Susan Lrosa banished on
a trip to a story in Rockville in She was
supposed to go there to get the babies in formula
and to call my mom, who pay phone, and she
(00:20):
never came. Hard. The disappearance of Susan LaRosa has never
officially been associated with the other missing girls. Her face
or her case was never included on those missing person
flyers posted around town. To law enforcement, there was no connection,
(00:41):
maybe because she was more than a decade older than
the youngest of the girls. Still, as an investigator, I
can't ignore facts, one of which is that within a
seven year span, Susan LaRosa became the fourth female to
go missing, not just in the same town, but within
a few miles of one another, and in three of
(01:03):
the cases merely blocks away. I've asked the Vernon p
D if they ever considered these cases the work of
a serial killer. When I hear of disappearances so similar
occurring in the same general location, it's hard to ignore
the potential. But as I began speaking with detectives in
(01:23):
two thousand nine, the year I started my investigation. They
said they had looked at every possibility but discounted it.
I've interviewed serial killers throughout my career, written seven books
about them, and the one common admission they all have
shared is that there are no coincidences when children go
(01:45):
missing within this close proximity, and that you need to
look not only for victim profile similarities, but location, time
of day, and opportunity. One serial killer who I've interviewed
for the past state years insists that when the obvious
presents itself, believe it because most serial abduction cases are
(02:07):
not the work of a diabolical genius or criminal mastermind.
They are committed by a disorganized, deviant, hyper focused on
one goal who will make mistakes. As he's told me,
find those common mistakes and you find your killer. You
(02:28):
can hear him here in an interview I conducted years ago,
as he puts the mindset of a serial killer into perspective.
His name Keith Hunter, Jesperson, the happy Face killer. There's
a wonderment of whether or not I want to kill
or not. I was, I was kind of I'm kind
(02:49):
of wired, maybe a little different than most. Like you know,
most pure killers are not criminals. You understand this right,
explain whereas a serial killer is not necessary a criminal
at all, he's just killer and others I'm not. I
won't go out of my way to rob someone. I
won't go out, I won't do I won't home invade.
I won't do this, of course, p K K. Dad.
(03:10):
But he didn't go in there to rob. He went
in to kill. Our motive is actually just to kill.
Previously on Paper Ghosts, she was with a group of
young men and her friend who was the same age
(03:30):
as her, and they went joy riding. There is drinking involved,
and they decided to throw pumpkins at the window and
we're pulled over and they took Lisa to the state
police barracks. He came over to my house. She um
she wanted to leave my mom and dad and no,
(03:51):
saying that she was very sorry and and you know,
embarrassed that you know, we got in trouble. And at
that point she decided, you know, she was gonna leave
and try and hitchhike home and never made it home.
And I'll never forget it. She came to my house
and a flirt and she said, I wish it was you.
I wish it was a stay. My name is and
(04:20):
William Phelps. This is paper ghosts. The connection between Susan
LaRosa and one of the other missing girls became apparent
to me when I was speaking to Maria Scrow, who
you heard in the last episode. Maria was Lisa White's
(04:43):
best friend and the last person to see Lisa alive
minutes before she presumably hitchhiked home alone. Maria told me
she used to babysit for the LaRosa family. Think about
that for a moment. Lisa White's best friend baby set
for a girl who would herself go missing a year
(05:05):
after Lisa. I had never heard this before, and I
know law enforcement had no clue. Not one detective had
ever asked the question, and to be fair, why would they.
But knowing what I now know, it has to be
considered cold case work is as much about inclusion as
it is about exclusion. Susan was a young mom, just
(05:32):
twenty years old and already she had three young children.
She had dark black hair cut just above her shoulders
Peter Pan style. Susan was petite, four ft eight inches tall,
nine pounds, green eyes. That's the extent of what you'd
know about Susan. Rossa if you read about her case
in the newspapers, But after years of looking into her
(05:55):
story and reviewing documents never before seen by the public,
I knew better than to take anything at face value.
You gotta understand our family was a very, uh fractured family.
There wasn't much love or attention. That's and Prentice one
(06:16):
of Susan Leross's four sisters and was the second oldest,
just one year younger than Susan. My mother only had
attention our time for Sue. So was her child, and
the other children really didn't exist. So she was a
lot of trouble. Sue was into drugs. Sue had abortion,
(06:40):
Sue had overdoses, she had she she would run off
with this guy, that guy she was having sex with
my uncle's she. I mean, it was it was a hellhouse.
And then Sue got married to Robert and she moved out,
and my mo seems to be happy. At that point,
(07:03):
she thought, Wow, somebody took herross night hands and he's
going to make everything wonderful. Robert is Bob LaRosa. Susan
was eighteen when she moved out of her family's home
and married Bob. Throughout my interviews, and research, I've developed
two varying versions of how they met. One person close
(07:25):
to Bob told me he met Susan while she was
in a psychiatric hospital, as he was there visiting someone else.
That same as lots of public reports and other information
I've dug up in Susan's case is false. Susan and
Bob lived less than a mile from each other on
Crystal Lake. There can be no doubt they hooked up
(07:46):
because they were neighbors, which is the version everyone of
Susan's immediate family members agrees with. Ever since Susan's disappearance
in nine, her family has kept out of the a spotlight.
I've spoken to many of them over the years about
when they'd feel ready to talk about what happened to Susan,
(08:07):
and they believe it's now or never forgot about me
and my sister and Terry Shanks's Susan Leros's youngest sister.
What kind of guy is Bob to your sister? Babolo
Rosa was a very um, quiet kind of guy. Their
dynamic was kind of odd, like she uh wasn't the
(08:31):
best housekeeper, wasn't the best cook? She uh? I guess
one time baked cake and it fell apart, so she
scotch taped it together and thought it would be okay.
But you know whatever, she was just a free spirit
kind of gal. Would you say he was a good
husband tour, Yes, I do. I wish he would have
been better in that he would have been stronger and
(08:54):
crushed her when it came to the kids. As far
as her discipline, he was never home. He was always
a single sprat medaling with him. He didn't have a
real job. He and I used to drive around the
Lake and Stafford area and look for scrat medal and
then we go to the junkyard and sell it so
he could put food on the table. Susan and Bob
had two sons, Maurice who goes by Moe and Robert
(09:16):
Robbie Jr. And a daughter, Stacy, the oldest. Each child
is nine months apart. But there was something about Susan's
middle child, Terry says that turns Susan off, that scared her.
Susan did not like the middle child, Robbie, and for
whatever reason treated him the most poorly out of the three.
(09:38):
My sister Sue was not a good mother. She was
She's a horrible mother. Actually, she was an abusive mother.
She didn't know how to love, She didn't know how
to be a mom. These kids were not what she wanted.
They never were what she wanted. And was Bob involved
in drugs to my knowledge? No, to my knowledge he
(10:02):
was not. Would you say she loved Bob in her way? Yes?
I I she had an odd way of Susan was
a brilliant young woman. She was brilliant, but unfortunately she
got involved with heroin. Yeah, that was a demon she
had before she met Robert. So Robert was sort of
like someone that was helping save her. On the day
(10:27):
Susan LaRosa went missing June, her husband Bob told police
Susan left their Rockville, Connecticut apartment in the early evening
to go to the nearby drug store, something she did
every day, and never returned home. I wondered what Terry
recalled from those early days after her sister vanished, feelings, thoughts, memories.
(10:51):
To me, the questions we ask are as important as
the answers we get. A month to the day that
she went missing was her twenty one birthday, and she
always told my mom, on my twenty one birthday, I'm
coming by. The use I'm gonna be streaking. You watch,
you wait for me, You wait for me, I'm gonna
(11:12):
come running by, you know, streaking, being totally buck naked.
That's what that was her plan. So my mom the
whole day sat there, probably smoked three packs of cigarettes waiting.
This kills me never time. But she never came. She
(11:37):
never came, And that's what that's when everything fell apart.
My mother could not she did not have a function.
She did not know what to do, She didn't know
(11:59):
what should too. She didn't know how to walk, she
didn't how to talk, she didn't know how to be.
Susan was her first born, Susan at the same time. Uh,
Susan and my mum went through a lot together. They
(12:20):
were very close. That are very close. Bund To get
(12:43):
a better understanding, I need to take a look at
what happened on the night Susan Rose had disappeared. There
are facts I can report with absolute certainty, facts made
public here for the first time in forty five years,
which begin to not only answer a lot of questions,
but lead me to cluse in several of the other
missing girl cases. For example, I know from law enforcement
(13:07):
documents written the day after Susan went missing that Bob
Larossa told police he and Susan argued because Susan struck
one of the kids. Again, here's Susan's sister, Terry Shanks. Uh.
She went off on a little one and she backhanded him,
split his head open. Kid was bleeding profusely. So you're
(13:33):
talking about the nights she went missing, that that she hit.
She did hit, Yes, she did hit him. In a
police report I've obtained, Bob LaRosa claims Susan hit their
middle child, Robert, who was only eighteen months old at
the time. The injury caused Robert to bleed. The family
(13:53):
has always believed it was a wound to the boy's head,
but police reports confirmed it was his bottom lower lip
and that the cut was not bad at all. This
all happened on the day Susan disappeared. There's no mention
of a head wound. According to Bob, Susan then grabbed
a ten dollar bill and a quarter and left the apartment.
(14:17):
Bob said Susan left their apartment at approximately six thirty
pm to go to the drug store to call her
mother and pick up baby formula. There was only one
drug store nearby, Arthur's Drugs. Susan was there every day,
same time, using the pay phone, buying cigarettes and baby items.
(14:37):
Maria Scrow, the l Rosa babysitter and Lisa White's best friend,
confirmed this detail for me, that Susan would call her
mother every day from a payphone at Arthur's Drugs, just
a few short blocks west of the Larossa's apartment. When
Susan failed to return home, Bob called relatives with no results.
(14:58):
At twelve thirty nine pm the now day, eighteen hours later,
Bob la Rossa called the Vernon p D to report
Susan was missing. He said his wife did not come home,
but he did not want to file a missing person
report yet. It was not until later that same day,
near dark, when Bob decided to file one. The question
(15:21):
is why wait almost twenty four hours later before filing
a report? Going on? What's going on? How are you?
(15:51):
How long you've been How long you've been made your crimes? No,
it's been a toll about six years now investigations. Lieutenant
Bill Meyer has been with the Vernon Police and now
heads made your crimes since two thousand two. He stands
six ft or so and has that familiar buzz cut
you'd expect to see on a cop. Bill is one
(16:12):
of the most practical investigators I know in the Tritown region.
He is unafraid to say when cops have made mistakes
or they go above and beyond, which is something I
greatly appreciate. That kind of honesty and self evaluation is
imperative when reinvestigating cold cases. I've known Bill for a
(16:34):
long time and have an immense amount of respect for
the guy. He stopped by my office one morning as
I was immersed in the cases. We stood in my
garage talking catching up. He explained a few things to
me off the record, putting a new perspective on the
notion that what you read and here online about cold
cases is likely fifty or more bullshit. You really have
(16:58):
to see actual documents and photos to truly understand what
you're working with, and in these cases, those resources, including
interviews with witnesses and family and even suspects, is really
all we have to go on. What's the worst investigation
(17:19):
you've been involved in Inverna Off the top of your head,
I mean, there's there's definitely different ways to categorize worst
the ones that keep me up at night. Yeah, I
mean a lot of the a lot of the child cases,
especially with young children. Is there a lot of sexual
exploitation going on still several months. If we go back
(17:43):
to the sixties and seventies, women families didn't report that
stuff right now. It was a different time. And I
think too, I think they were scared that a police
wouldn't believe them. Uh, certainly their parents wouldn't believe them, right.
And a lot of people have told me that I've
interviewed in all these cases have said, you know, we
were told what happens in this house stays in this house.
(18:05):
You know. Yeah, in the eighties, I mean, domestic violence
really came of age. Tracy Thurman case out in Torring,
tim was kind of one of the turning points in
Connecticut and across the country. The Tracy Thurman case was
a high profile watershed moment in the country with regards
to how domestic violence was viewed. In May three, Tracy
(18:27):
Thurman called the Torrington, Connecticut Police department and reported that
her strange husband had beaten her and was now threatening
the killer. The Torrington police told Tracy to come back
in three weeks when the officer handling domestic cases returned
from vacation. Two weeks later, she called again. This time
(18:48):
one officer arrived and twenty one year old Tracy lay
critically wounded from multiple stab wounds, bloodied in her front
yard as her husband stood over her with a knife.
The husband was not arrested. He even kicked Tracy in
the head in front of the officer. Was not until
her husband tried to assault her as she lay on
a stretcher and was being placed inside an ambulance that
(19:11):
he was finally put in handcuffs. Tracy sued the town.
There was a book and movie made about the case,
and Tracy became the face of domestic violence reform. Bill continues,
explaining it from a law enforcement perspective thirty forty years ago,
in the reality, honestly sickening, police used to handle domestic
(19:35):
violence and just for the warning, you know, and and
they would tell husbands, you know, control your wife, or
I'll go back inside. Don't call us. Now, completely different procedures,
and when mandatory arrests and mandatory refer all the services,
and our focus is really on stopping the cycle of
domestic violence. But it wasn't just men abuse of women.
(20:01):
Subject rarely talked about then, was women abusing men or
wives abusing their husbands. Susan didn't limit her abuse to
just her children. I've learned from her sister and that
Bob was subject to her violence as well. I saw
her crack them over the head with a cast iron
frying pan where he needed stitches, and he didn't do
(20:23):
a thing about it because it just wasn't in him
to do that, And he put up with a lot.
So we know violence was common in LaRosa home, most
definitely from Susan. According to a police report I've obtained
within the year leading up to her disappearance, Susan had
actually stabbed Bob during a heated argument and abused her children.
(20:47):
So if abusers could get away with beating and stabbing
their spouses, think about what else they got away with
inside the home. It was a gruesome discovery, kind of
the last thing loggers widening an interstate here in Burning,
(21:09):
Connecticut would have ever thought they'd come upon. Unlike the
other missing girl cases I've been investigating, Susan Larosa's story
actually had tangible evidence. On May nineteen nine, about three
years after she went missing, construction workers widening Interstate eight
(21:30):
six in Vernon Rockville discovered what was left of Susan's
body in a wooded area off an old logging road.
This was about three point six miles away from the
LaRosa Apartment today, as it was back then, the area
is dense woods and very secluded, the kind of place
where kids in the seventies and eighties held keg parties
(21:52):
and bonfires. I can say, from my experience as an
investigator and someone who has lived in the town most
of my life, who ever dumped Susan le Ross's body
out there knew that area very well. That's not where
you're gonna dump a body if you're not in a hurry.
You know, if if Susan fell victim to a serial killer,
(22:16):
I I don't think that's where they would have founded her.
Retired detective John Collins was the lieutenant in charge of
major crimes for the Vernon Police Department back in two
thousand two. In two thousand four, his department made a
concerted effort to reopen Susan Leros's case. There is arguably
(22:37):
no one else who knows more about Susan's murder than
John Collins. Susan was found fully clothed, her pants fly
was unbuttoned and her zipper down. She had no other
injuries besides a fatal fracture to her skull. She only
had two dimes in a nickel that's twenty five cents
in her pocket. Remember, Bob Larossa told police Susan took
(23:00):
ten dollars and a quarter when she left the house.
He made a point several times, durned several interviews over
the years to say a quarter. Why would Susan have
then two dimes in a nickel on her well? A
pay phone call in Connecticut in cost a dime was
(23:24):
Bob suggesting that his wife had a quarter because finding
two dimes in a nickel on her meant she must
have reached the drug store after leaving their home and
exchanged the quarter to make her daily call to her mother.
Much different from the other missing young girls I've been investigating.
(23:44):
Law enforcement had leads to go on with regard to
Susan's disappearance, mainly a crime scene, albeit secondary because it
was clear to the corner and detectives that Susan was
not murdered at the location her remains were und They
also had a huge bread crumb to follow. The last
(24:06):
person to see Susan alive before she went missing, her husband,
Bob LaRosa. Even though uh, Bob looked like a prime suspect,
you know, we we still we went about it with
an open mind, and the information that we got didn't
(24:26):
really point us in any other directions. Weeks after Susan's
body was discovered, Bob LaRosa was taken into police custody
and questioned for two hours. At the time, law enforcement
publicly stated Bob was not a suspect and foul play
was not a path they were pursuing. It was a ploy,
(24:48):
you know, to make him feel as though he was
helping the investigation, and he was not a person of interest.
But in reality, there were no other suspects besides Bob.
B done the police report, which has not been made
public until now, Bob told police he believed Susan was
not messing around with other guys, but to everyone in
(25:11):
Susan's family at the time, and later, when talking publicly
to the Harvard Current newspaper, Bob starkly contradicted himself, saying, quote,
I was under the impression that she took off with
another guy. She was always flirting with other guys end quote.
They had a very tumultuous relationship. There was cheating on
(25:33):
both sides. There was uh indications of domestic violence, domestic issues,
and as you know, when a woman goes missing and
when a woman turns up dead, if you just blindly
went and arrested the husband, you have a good batting average.
(25:55):
Family members have told me that Susan's emotional mental state
was stable, in her physical condition good on the day
she disappeared, But Bob would routinely chastise his wife's mental
state to her family. He consistently told one story to
police in a different story to family and friends, which
in the eyes of law enforcement, made him a prime suspect.
(26:21):
The truth is inherent, infallible, It does not change. At
one point during that interview, a detective, in what I
think is a brilliant Columbu like move, casually explained to
Bob that if he had, you know, accidentally killed his wife,
it would be considered quote negligent homicide. Bob's response to that,
(26:47):
how much time will I get? An innocent person doesn't
ask that question A hundred times out of a hundred times,
an innocent person does not ask that question. There was
never any official record of Bob being violent with Susan,
But look, I'm far from naive. I've written extensively about
(27:10):
domestic violence cases, many of which have ended in murder
the way it has always been explained to me by
experts as this. In se of murder cases, the victim
knows the murderer. According to the Centers for Disease Control,
over half of the killings of women in America are
related to intimate partner violence, with the vast majority of
(27:33):
the victims dying at the hands of a current or
former romantic partner. Staggering statistics. In other words, when a
wife is murdered, you would hit the bull's eye just
about every time if every dart you tossed was aimed
at the husband. I had asked Susan's youngest sister, Terry,
(27:54):
what she believed happened that night between Susan and Bob,
the night Susan hit her middle child, split the inside
of his lip, and supposedly left the apartment on her
own to go to the drug store. I think that
what happened was eventually, um, he had it. I think
(28:15):
one night he got home from work and should happen.
So the theory the family has is that either Okay,
he went off on her because he couldn't take it
anymore and he was trying to protect his kid. So
he either took a piece of pipe that he always
(28:35):
had in the house because he always collected it and
knocked her with it, or he just knocked her down
and she smashed her head against the tub. Terry then
described what else the family has always believed, because she
did die of a fractured skull. I pointed to my
head and asked where exactly was in the back of
the head, back of the head, back of the head,
(28:57):
because I've heard now front of the head, and now
I hear back definitely back there. Yes, I didn't mention
this during the interview, but I've seen the crime scene
photos which include close ups of susan skull. She had
no injuries to the back of her head. The injury
that killed Susan Larrossa, according to her autopsy report, was
(29:18):
to the front of her head, just above her forehead
on the right side. Susan LaRosa stared at her killer.
She was struck with a fatal blow to her head.
So you think Bob killed your sister. Do you think
he acted alone? In the next step of that, no,
(29:41):
I do not. In the next episode of Paper Ghosts,
I have night tears. I see my mom. She's changing
my one to changing table. She turned around. She sat
my brother in the face, right on the nose, and
(30:01):
it bled, it bled, It was leading. Did your dad
ever have the station wagon? Um? Yeah, um we owned
the station wagon the gentlemen and that was there that
showed up. He has on a red and black checkered
um flannel shirt and he smells even now to this
day at I can't smell that smell without like freezing.
(30:25):
Paper Ghosts is written and executive produced by me and
William Phelps, with help from producer Christine Everett and sound
editing by Pete Cardi from back Room Audio. A special
thanks to Abou Safar and will Pearson from My Heart Radio.
The series theme number four four two is written and
performed by Tom Mooney and Thomas Phelps. For more podcasts
(30:51):
for My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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