Statute of limitations creates roadblock in Susan Negersmith case | Chapter 4

Welcome back to Late Edition Crime Beat Chronicles, a Lee Enterprises podcast with host Nat Cardona. On this podcast, you’ll hear true crime stories as told by journalists from regional newspapers across the country.

For the next series of episodes, we will be diving into the 1990 cold case murder of Susan Negersmith in Wildwood, New Jersey. You’ll hear from reporters, past and present, who covered the case as it has unfolded throughout the years and the many twists and turns along the way.

Susan Negersmith was a 20 year-old woman from Carmel, New York. She was visiting Wildwood, New Jersey, on Memorial Day Weekend with friends in 1990.  She said goodbye to her friends in the evening of Saturday, May 26, and by the early hours of Sunday morning, Susan’s partially clothed body was found behind a dumpster near a Wildwood restaurant. Her death was originally ruled accidental, although there were signs of a struggle.

An important thing to note about Susan Negersmith’s weekend trip with friends to Wildwood: this area is a destination for a debaucherously good time. Tourists flock there in the warm weather months to party hard. There’s a boardwalk packed with restaurants and bars packed with people from all over. Drinking heavily is a main activity. The reputation of the area for all of these things quickly comes into play in the early days of the investigation ... at the expense of solving Susan’s case in a timely fashion.

For this final episode of the series, we speak with Eric Conklin, a breaking news reporter for the Press of Atlantic City, who has written about some of the recent developments in the case tied charges involving Jerry Rosado, a Millville, New Jersey, man accused of sexually assaulting Negersmith.

A motion for dismissal was made on Rosado’s behalf on the grounds that his sexual assault charge exceeded the statute of limitations governing crimes in 1990, when Negersmith’s body was found.

Rosado was released from the Cape May County jail March 30, a day after the appellate panel published their opinion siding with the defense. We'll have more details on that in the fourth episode.

Read more about the case

• Cape May County judge dismisses charges against man accused in Negersmith cold case (April 20, 2023)
• Man charged in Wildwood cold case released following case dismissal (March 30, 2023)
• DNA used to break a 30-year stalemate in Wildwood cold case (April 18, 2022)
• After 32 years, Millville man accused of attacking Susan Negersmith (April 8, 2022)
• Negersmith family finds new champion in pursuit of justice (May 31, 2015)
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