WIFE OF JERSEY MAYOR ON TRIAL IN '75 DEATH OF SON

WIFE OF JERSEY MAYOR ON TRIAL IN '75 DEATH OF SON

By DONALD JANSON

Published: October 7, 1984

CAMDEN, N.J., Oct. 5— Nine years after a local investigation cleared her, the wife of Mayor William G. Rohrer of Haddon Township has gone on trial on charges of murdering the couple's adopted 2-year-old son.

Although the prosecutor, Anthony Zarrillo, a deputy state attorney general, said in his opening statement that the nine-year delay and reasons for it were not an issue now, the first six days of testimony have included allusions to the political and economic influence of the 73-year-old Mr. Rohrer, who has been Mayor for 33 years and is founder and chairman of the First Peoples Bank of New Jersey.

Two witnesses testified that they felt jobs or promotions could have been lost had they talked about aspects of the case they had known about at the time of the death.

Mayor Rohrer has not attended the trial, which began Sept. 26, and did not return calls asking for comment.

The adopted son, William G. Rohrer 3d, who was called Billy, died on May 28, 1975. He and a 2-year-old girl, Laura, had been adopted in El Salvador by Mayor Rohrer and his wife, Mimi, three months earlier. Explanation Was Accepted

Mrs. Rohrer, now 43, told investigators Billy had inflicted his numerous wounds on himself by banging his head on his high chair, falling down stairs and otherwise causing himself bodily harm.

Reports by the Haddon Township police, as well as those of investigators for the Camden County Medical Examiner and Prosecutor, accepted that explanation. After an autopsy, the Medical Examiner, Dr. William T. Read, attributed the death to self-inflicted or accidental causes. The office of Prosecutor Thomas J. Shusted concluded that there had been no homicide.

Two years later, during an inquiry into the the adequacy of medical examiners' work, the State Commission of Investigation included the Rohrer case and concluded that Billy's death appeared to be murder or manslaughter.

An ensuing investigation by the state police and the Division of Criminal Justice produced an indictment in December 1982 charging that Mrs. Rohrer murdered the child ''through a pattern of abuse.'' Second Autopsy Performed

On Monday, Dr. Read, now retired, told the jury in Superior Court before Judge David G. Eynon that he was wrong in concluding in 1975 that the injuries were self-inflicted. He said he had based the initial finding too much on reports by the local investigators that said Billy frequently banged his head.

After a court-ordered exhumation of the body, a 1979 autopsy by state authororities found that the cause of death was a hemorrhage of the membrane covering the brain. Dr. Read testified that he agrees and that the hemorrhage was caused by a succession of blows inflicted by someone other than the child.

Dr. Robert Barroway, the Rohrers' pediatrician, testified that Mrs. Rohrer called him a month before Billy's death and said the child hated her. He said he was alarmed at the tone of the call and referred them to a child psychiatrist.

''I felt there was a significant emotional problem, not from the child but the mother,'' he said. Original Inquiry Defended

In his opening statement, the defense attorney, Raymond M. Brown, said pressure had mounted over the years ''to find something wrong'' with the 1975 conclusions. After the prosecution rests its case, he is expected to present witnesses to support the theory that the fatal wounds could have been self-inflicted.

Mr. Shusted, now a State Assemblyman, said in a telephone interview that criticism of the 1975 investigation by his office was ''like Monday-morning quarterbacking.''

He said that, even though both he and Mayor Rohrer were active in the Republican Party and a niece of the Mayor was on the Prosecutor's staff, no favoritism was shown in the investigation. To deflect any appearance of favoritism, he said, the record was referred to the Attorney General's office for review.

Mrs. Rohrer, who if convicted could be sentenced to 30 years in prison, remains free on her own recognizance .