ARGUMENTS OPEN IN MIMI ROHRER MURDER TRIAL

Author: Jane M. Von Bergen, Inquirer Staff Writer

Article Text:

A deputy state attorney general yesterday told a Camden County Superior Court jury that Billy Rohrer, a round-faced toddler of 2 1/2 years, died on the morning of May 28, 1975, because his psychologically troubled mother ''beat Billy to death."

Anthony Zarrillo said Mimi Rohrer had "murdered her son, her adopted son, Billy, through a pattern of child abuse." He quoted a family psychiatrist's description of her as "paranoid and delusional."

But Rohrer's attorney, Raymond A. Brown, said it had been Billy, whom the Rohrers had adopted from El Salvador, who had been troubled - so troubled that his mother had noticed that "Billy was self-destructive and threw himself around and appeared to feel no pain."

The two attorneys made their remarks yesterday during opening statements in the murder trial of Rohrer, the wife of William Rohrer, Haddon Township's mayor since 1951 and the founder of the First Peoples Bank of New Jersey. The trial began yesterday after more than two weeks of jury selection and preliminary procedural arguments.

Immediately after Billy Rohrer's death, the Camden County medical examiner ruled that the boy's injuries were self-inflicted; the Camden County prosecutor's office, after a four-month investigation, agreed and closed the case.

But in 1979, the State Commission of Investigation (SCI) said the death appeared to have been either murder or manslaughter, and a state grand jury indicted Mimi Rohrer for murder in December 1982. She pleaded not guilty to the charge and waited for her day in court.

Yesterday, Mimi Rohrer took notes as the attorneys addressed the jury gathered in Superior Court Judge David G. Eynon's courtroom in the Camden County Hall of Justice.

In presenting the state's case, Zarrillo described the bruises that covered Billy's body and said the Camden County medical examiner had failed to recognize that a large bruise on the child's jaw had been caused by a human bite.

Zarrillo said that on two occasions, Rohrer had let the child stay with other people for a few days, and that both times bruises had been noticed on the boy's body. One of those times, the boy spent four days in foster care before returning to his mother, Zarrillo said.

Zarrillo said the return "was a very unfortunate development for Billy,

because within two weeks, Billy Rohrer was dead."

Zarrillo told the jury that the only question that they had to decide was whether Rohrer had killed the child.

"It is unfortunate that nine years have elapsed," he said, holding a sheaf of papers as he stood close to the jury. He told the jurors that the case was not "about delay. It is not about the reasons for the delay. It is not about placing blame for the delay."

Brown disagreed on the significance of the delay, which he said undercut the prosecution's credibility.

''As the pressure to find something wrong here evolved," Brown said, ''people began to change."

Less than three hours into the trial yesterday, Rohrer's political influence had become an issue.

The state's first witness was former Haddon Township police officer Henry Voigtsberger, the first officer who responded to a call from the Rohrers' home in Haddon Township's Westmount section on May 28, 1975. Voigtsberger said he had taken Mimi Rohrer, who was cradling the child in her arms, to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden, where the boy was pronounced dead minutes later.

When he testified before the SCI in 1977, Voigtsberger said yesterday, he told the committee that he had noticed dried blood on the boy's nose that morning but that he could not remember seeing bruises on Billy's face. However, a few days after his SCI testimony, he recalled yesterday, he remembered the bruises, particularly a large one on the left side of the boy's jaw.

He did not call the SCI to change his testimony, he told the jury yesterday, partly because "I felt it wouldn't be in my best interest in view of the parties involved with the job. If I made comments about the investigation, it might jeopardize my advancement."

The other witness to testify yesterday was Dr. Albert F. Jurecic, assistant corporate medical director for Campbell Soup Co. and the emergency-room doctor at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital on May 28, 1975. He told the jury that he noticed blood and bruises all over the child's body.