A Hell House

flyers posted around town. To law enforcement, there was no connection, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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

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 were very close. That are very close. Bund To get 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 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 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 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. 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. 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.

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 is why wait almost twenty four hours later before filing a report? Going on? What's going on? How are you? 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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.

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, 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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, 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 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

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. 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. 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,

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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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.

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 for My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.