The 911 call came in at 6:45 on a warm August evening. A frantic young man named Seth Green told the operator he had just found his girlfriend lying on the kitchen floor in a pool of blood. When police arrived at the small apartment in Chicopee, Massachusetts, they walked into a nightmare. Twenty-year-old Amanda Plasse had been stabbed multiple times.
The kitchen was covered in blood spatter, the table shoved out of place, a dent in the refrigerator where her body had been thrown against it. It looked like she had fought desperately for her life, even dragging herself across the floor in a final, terrible struggle. There was no sign of forced entry, and the apartment was otherwise spotless, which ruled out robbery. But in the back room, detectives found a broken window leading to the porch.
Glass was shattered on the floor, and on that glass, they lifted partial palm prints. In the kitchen, they found a single set of bloody footprints in the dried blood. Expert analysis showed they were made by a Nike running shoe. When they measured the print, they were shocked.
It was a size seven and a half. Very few men wear shoes that small. At the autopsy, the medical examiner counted fifteen stab wounds, seven of which could have been fatal. Because Amanda had clearly fought back, detectives took clippings from underneath her fingernails.
It was a home run. They recovered an unknown male DNA profile, skin she had scratched off her attacker while fighting for her life. But with no suspect, the evidence was useless. Attention quickly turned to Seth, her distraught boyfriend.
He told police he had been asked to stay late at his roofing job that day, something that had never happened before. He was the one who found her, after all. But when detectives tested his DNA, his palm prints, and his shoe size, which was an eleven and a half, he was eliminated. Seth then pointed them toward Amanda’s ex-boyfriend, Jesse, who worked at the same restaurant.
Jesse had been fired the day before the murder after flying into a rage when he saw Seth and Amanda kissing. He had made threats, saying he would come back to her apartment and she would see what he could do. Jesse’s alibi fell apart when his friend admitted they weren’t together that day. But then Jesse broke down, admitting he had lied because he had taken his parents’ car without permission.
Surveillance footage placed him at a bar on the other side of town at the time of the murder. His DNA and size ten and a half shoe didn’t match either. The case went cold. For over two years, detectives collected more than fifty DNA samples from various people, all of them coming back with no match.
Detective Gibbons was haunted by the case, going over the crime scene photos again and again, asking himself what he had missed. Then one day, he saw it. A tiny detail he had overlooked for two years. In the background of one photo, there was a whiteboard.
Written on it were the words, “Dennis was here 8-11-11. ” It was dated just two weeks before Amanda’s murder. The name Dennis wasn’t in the original case file. Detectives dug into Amanda’s phone records and found she had been in contact with a man named Dennis Rosa Roman around the time of her death.
He also lived just a block and a half from Amanda’s apartment. When detectives approached him on the street, they asked him about Amanda Plasse. He claimed he didn’t know any Amanda. But he was nervous.
As they questioned him, he lit a cigarette. Detective Gibbons watched that cigarette like it was the most important piece of evidence in the world. He stalled the man, asking more questions, keeping him talking. When Rosa Roman dropped the cigarette and said he had to go, Gibbons had his partner grab a bag and rubber gloves.
They picked up the cigarette butt and sent it for DNA testing. The next morning, Rosa Roman called Gibbons repeatedly, frantic. Why did you grab my cigarette? Gibbons told him to come in for an interview, and he would explain.
During that interview, Rosa Roman admitted he did know Amanda, but claimed he had never been inside her apartment. As they talked, Detective Fitzgerald noticed his shoes. They were Nikes, and they looked small. He asked Rosa Roman what size shoe he wore.
The man answered, “Seven. ” Detectives were floored. They believed he was wearing the same shoes from the crime scene. The DNA results came back the next day.
It was a match. When confronted, Rosa Roman changed his story again. He admitted he was there. He said, “I saw her die.
” But he insisted he hadn’t killed her, that he had just watched her take her last breath. The partial palm print from the broken window was a match too. Dennis Rosa Roman was arrested and charged with Amanda Plasse’s murder. Nearly five years after the brutal killing, Rosa Roman stood trial.
After eight days of testimony and five hours of deliberation, the jury found him guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. To this day, he has never admitted to killing Amanda, and the motive remains unclear.
For Detective Gibbons, the verdict was a redemption, a chance to finally breathe after years of wondering what he had missed.
