exposing the dark side of adoption
Register Log in

ROHRER OUT ON BAIL, NEW ATTITUDE CITED

public

Author: RON AVERY, Daily News Staff Writer

A sudden change of attitude toward her husband and lawyer convinced a judge in Camden yesterday to grant bail to murder suspect Mimi Rohrer.

Rohrer, charged with beating her 2 1/2-year-old son, Billy, to death in 1975, had been denied bail since she was captured in Philadelphia last month after fleeing in the middle of her trial.

Yesterday, her husband, Haddon Township Mayor William Rohrer, told Superior Court Judge David G. Eynon that he would take the responsibility of seeing that his wife comes to court each day.

Bail was set at $100,000. Rohrer quickly put up $10,000 - the 10 percent needed to release his wife from the women's annex of Camden County Jail.

Rohrer and her husband had separated shortly before the trial started. But in court yesterday the wealthy 74-year-old banker said he will move back into the family house in the Westmont section of Haddon Township.

The Rohrers' daughter, Laura, 11, also will return home. Mimi Rohrer, 43, had left the girl with a friend in western Pennsylvania last month.

The most striking change in the defendant's attitude is a willingness to communicate with her lawyer, Raymond M. Brown.

She stopped speaking with Brown after the first week of testimony and has petitioned the court daily for permission to fire the Newark, N.J., attorney. She had even complained to the judge when Brown's chair touched her chair in the courtroom.

She said Brown's only interest was in "protecting" her husband but never explained the allegation.

Earlier this week, however, Mimi Rohrer started whispering comments to Brown during his questioning of witnesses. Yesterday, Brown reported a change in her attitude, saying he and his client talked for four hours on Wednesday.

In granting bail, Eynon warned Rohrer that if she fled again, the trial would continue in her absence.

On Oct. 9, Rohrer traveled to Washington instead of coming to court. She visited the congressional office of Geraldine Ferraro and Walter Mondale's campaign hadquarters, talking with aides about a "conspiracy" against her.

The next day she was spotted at the Philadelphia YMCA at Broad and Arch streets and arrested.

She hired lawyer Nino V. Tinari and fought extradition back to New Jersey. But the governors of both states moved swifty to sign extradition papers and she was returned to Camden the next week.

During her absence, Brown argued that his client was a "borderline personality" who had become psychotic under the stress of trial and was mentally incompetent.

Rohrer refused to be examined by a court-appointed psychiatrist. Eynon ruled she was competent to continue.

Arguing against bail yesterday, Deputy state Attorney General Anthony Zarrillo commented on the "miraculous recovery" in the defendant's mental state.

"What's to show that if the stress rises, she won't take off again?" Zarrillo asked. "The best efforts of her husband and brother cannot assure that she will show up unless they hold her under lock and key."

Before Rohrer's bail hearing yesterday, several friends testified as character witnesses in her behalf.

She is expected to testify in her defense, probably next week.

In early 1975 the Rohrers traveled to El Salvador where they adopted two orphans. The boy, Billy, died about three months later of head injuries.

Investigators ruled the death accidental, accepting Mimi Rohrer's statements that the child had neurological problems and would constantly bang his head into objects.

Questions persisted, however, leading to new investigations and Rohrer's indictment on murder charges in 1982.

1984 Nov 30