BILLIE'S EARLY LIFE UNFOLDS AFTER LONG SEARCH LEADS TO SHACK IN EL SALVADOR

BILLIE'S EARLY LIFE UNFOLDS AFTER LONG SEARCH LEADS TO SHACK IN EL SALVADOR

Author: Jane M. Von Bergen, Inquirer Staff Writer

Lying awake at night in her shack on the edge of an inactive volcano outside San Salvador, the natural mother of Billie Rohrer said, she sometimes dreamed of the young boy who was no longer hers.

Jesus Margarita Cordova Miranda had no way of knowing that her son, Miguelito, had been adopted by Haddon Township Mayor William G. Rohrer Jr. and his wife, Mimi, and had gone to the United States.

In February 1975, Miguelito Alvarada became William G. Rohrer 3d. Nine years later, his adoptive mother, Mimi Rohrer, is on trial in Camden, charged with murder.

Rohrer, 43, is accused of killing the the young boy through a pattern of child abuse. Billie died May 28, 1975.

Miranda, who had not known that her son had died, told investigators that she had dreamed that Miguelito was on the summit of the mountain outside her shack but that she could never reach him.

Rohrer's attorneys and the experts they have hired say it is impossible to determine how Billie Rohrer died. They stress his impoverished background in El Salvador, his low birth weight and a possibile brain disease.

The prosecutor, state Deputy Attorney General Anthony Zarrillo, and the experts he has presented point to what they call bite marks, bruises and brain injuries as evidence of child abuse and murder.

Rohrer's daughter, Laura, 11, was expected to testify today. She was adopted by the Rohrers in El Salvador at the same time as Billie but was not originally related to him. Testimony about Billie's age at the time of his death - 2 1/2 or 3 1/2 - has differed.

In their deliberations, expected to begin late this week, the Camden County Superior Court jury is likely to consider, among other things, the story of Billie's life as told last week by the Salvadorans who reared and cared for him in his first years.

Finding those Salvadorans, including Billie's natural parents, required a major effort by Rohrer's defense team.

Gunfire and mortar rounds echoed off the mountains in August 1983 when Raymond M. Brown, a defense attorney from Newark, N.J., and two private investigators - Nelson Sobrini and Willard Brown (no relation to the attorney) - went to El Salvador hoping to unravel Billie's past.

In interviews with the defense attorney and his investigators and in testimony last week by the Salvadorans, there emerged an account of the boy's life in El Salvador.

The boy's story began Oct. 31, 1971, at a maternity hospital in San Salvador, where 5-pound Miguelito Alvarada was born to Miranda. The father was Miguel Tomas Orellana Alvarada.

In his first years, the boy lived in a brothel, an orphanage and an apartment that was no more than scrap wood and metal propped against a prison wall.

Alvarada testified that Miranda was a 38-year-old prostitute he met in a brothel two years before she became pregnant by him. He said that he was 32 and married with two daughters but that he had had marital problems and an intense yearning to father a son.

When Miguelito was born, Alvarada said, he and Miranda moved in together, and black-and-white snapshots from those days show a happy baby playing in a bucket and standing in front of his house. "He liked airplanes and cars," Miranda testified, smiling.

But about two years after the boy was born, Alvarada said, he left Miranda for a woman half his age. Miranda and Miguelito then lived in a building that housed a bar, according to Miranda, who said she sold vegetables on the street.

Miranda said Alvarada's girlfriend, Cecilia De Jong, stole Miguelito out of jealousy to keep Alvarada from seeing Miranda.

De Jong told a different story. She said Miranda had abandoned her son at the grocery that was operated by De Jong's mother. For the two weeks that the boy stayed with her, De Jong said, she saw him deliberately bang his head against a wall at times - testimony similar to that of previous defense witnesses.

Alvarada testified last week that he had then taken Miguelito to the San Salvador courthouse to keep him away from Miranda, whom he described as a drunkard who neglected Miguelito and had "diversions with men" at a house of ill repute.

"It was a method of salvation," Alvarada said. "We were were giving him a refuge from the corruption that existed where the mother had taken him to live. He lost weight, and the sadness was reflected in his face."

Eventually, Miguelito was known as Pepe in a Salvadoran orphanage where, according to prosecution documents, he was a favorite of the staff. At the same time, the Rohrers came to the orphanage to adopt a child because Mimi Rohrer could not conceive.

Red tape complicated the adoption procedure, but it was straightened out when Henry A. Kissinger, then U.S. secretary of state, sent a telegram to the American Embassy in San Salvador asking officials there to help the Rohrers expedite the paper work.

When Brown and his investigators arrived in El Salvador in August 1983, they went to the courthouse in San Salvador and they persuaded a judge to bend adoption-confidentiality rules enough to get the address of the grocery store - by that time, a boarded shack - that had been operated by Cecilia De Jong's family.

The investigators enlisted the aid of a Jehovah's Witnesses minister, who helped them talk to people who lived near the former grocery.

At one point, to help gain more cooperation from local people, Brown and his investigators spent a couple of nights drinking in neighborhood taverns.

They then went to a taco stand, where they found someone who knew a landlord who had rented an apartment to Miranda and Alvarada. They also found the De Jong family, but not Cecilia, who turned up later.

One of her Cecilia's relatives led them to the government agency where Alvarada worked. Alvarada recognized his son from the photograph and, Raymond Brown said, felt so guilty about giving Miguelito up for adoption that he had had a vasectomy and had adopted a baby girl to make amends.

The father had the mother's address on an envelope; she had written to him asking for money.

Brown and his investigators found her place, finally, in a warren of huts and hovels about 20 miles out of town in an area controlled by guerrillas.