A Winter of Murder Trials

The strangest of the winter murder trials was the last one, Commonwealth vs Barbara Rogers. The Rogers case happened the same week as the Jones homicide. The case was strange from the start. Barbara Rogers was about 43 years old at the time of the murder. The victim was her boyfriend Steven Mineo, about 12 years younger. Stephen was shot point-blank contact with a .45 caliber Glock. The muzzle of the Glock had been pressed against the center of Steven’s forehead at the time it was fired. The bullet passed straight through Steven’s head and was later found embedded in a mattress. From the angle, it was clear that Steven was sitting on the floor of the room at the time he was shot. It was also clear that the shooter stood above him. The apartment was a single room studio type apartment full of clutter. Despite being in his early thirties, Steven was a very immature fellow who collected Japanese anime figures. He and Barbara Rogers had met through an online cult based in Ohio run by a woman named Sherry Shriner. Shriner was believed by The Cult to be a prophet able to discern and guard against reptilians, alien life-forms masquerading as human beings. The cult also believed in vampires and witches who were capable of great mischief and death. Over the years, Steven and Barbara grew friendly online. Eventually, Steven invited Barbara to come stay with him and his father in a small house in New Jersey. According to his dad, Barbara was Steven’s first and last girlfriend.

Barbara stayed with Steven and his father in their house in New Jersey for only a month or so. Mr. Mineo Sr realized that there was something wrong with Barbara. She would never greet him, smile, or engage in conversation. She also had strange eating habits; he recalled that she would eat peanut butter out of jar the with her fingers and leave it out in the kitchen. She would not put her stuff away. She was also fond of beer, something that the elder Mr. Mineo did not appreciate. Stephen’s brother Charles also found Barbara strange and did not approve of the relationship. Finally, Mr. Mineo told Steven that Barbara had to go. Steven replied that if Barbara had to go then so would he. In a couple weeks following this discussion Steven and Barbara moved out. Steven  liked the gun laws in Pennsylvania. So he elected Pennsylvania as his destination. Steven believed in the Apocalypse and in the requirement that to survive the apocalypse you should be properly equipped with weapons, gear, meals ready to eat, and anything else one might need to survive an apocalypse. The couple rented a small efficiency apartment which Steven called the ‘Pocono Resistance Headquarters’. The money for the apartment, and for everything else, came from Barbara. Barbara received Social Security disability and a pension from her eight years in the military. Records indicated that she suffered from a mental disorder and was discharged honorably. She had a history of depression, alcohol abuse, and suicide attempts. She also complained that she heard voices. She had been married twice leaving both husbands and also her own children behind.

In the months following their relocation to Pennsylvania, a profound event changed their lives. It started with a comment made by Barbara during an online conversation. She had expressed pleasure in eating raw meat. She was denounced as a ‘reptile, a vampire, and a witch’ by Sherry Shriner and the other members of the cult. Despite the time and effort that Steven put into the cult he went to Barbara’s defense. He denied that she was a reptile, a vampire, or a witch. He denounced Sherry Shriner as a false prophet and began a YouTube crusade posting numerous videos in an attempt to expose Sherry Shriner as a fraud. For her part, Shriner warned Steven that Barbara would kill him, take his soul, and that he was in great peril.

On what would be the last day of Steven’s life the couple went to a nearby bar/restaurant, Lombardi’s in Tobyhanna, ate dinner and had drinks. A barmaid recalled Barbara’s last drink, right around last call, where she requested a Bloody Mary. After the bar closed, the couple returned home. According to Barbara, Steven who had been arguing with people online about the cult wanted to shoot his gun in the backyard. His gun was the .45 caliber Glock. Barbara told the police that they went back behind the shed. Steven fired two rounds and Barbara fired a third. Steven and Barbara went back into the house and Steven sat on the floor. Stephen had set his cell phone on the counter next to where he sat. Right around that time, and based on the analysis of the cell phone performed by detective Brian Webbe, someone asked Google to play ‘Billy Idol Eyes Without a Face’. One of the things very important to the cult was identifying who were the ‘reptilians’ among us. Interestingly, Billy Idol was widely believed by cult members to be not human but reptilian. With the music playing, Barbara took the .45, placed it in both hands and stood in an isosceles shooting position, with both elbows locked, pointing the gun downward against the forehead of Steven Mineo and shot him. Barbara would later try to explain her action, contradicting herself numerous times. At times, She said she did not pull the trigger but that Steven guided the gun in her hands to his head and told her to shoot it because he wanted to die. At other times, she claimed the gun went off unintentionally and she did not mean to shoot him. At other times she claimed she thought the gun might have been unloaded and that he could survive the shot. Her contradictory stories were so glaring that they were used as evidence of her guilty conscience.

Sherry Shriner would die a few months after the murder of a massive heart attack. Originally the defense was trying to obtain what is known as a diminished capacity verdict. Diminished capacity means that either due to a mental disease or an extreme drunken state a defendant at the time of the killing, was unable to form the specific intent to kill needed for a jury to convict of first-degree murder. If the prosecution can’t disprove diminished capacity, a defendant could only be found guilty of murder in the third degree not Murder One. The defense had Barbara evaluated by a forensic psychiatrist. We also had Barbara evaluated. Our evaluation was performed by doctors Robin Altman and Larry Rotenberg. The doctors found that Barbara did not suffer from a bipolar disorder claimed by the defense expert, but instead a personality disorder with narcissistic features, a preoccupation with herself, an emptiness, a lack of empathy towards others. When the relationship became unpleasant and she felt trapped in the small apartment with the very immature Mr. Mineo, opportunity presented itself. The opportunity was in a form of a loaded .45 caliber handgun and the fact that Mr Mineo was drunk and under the influence of an herbal supplement he had been taken known as Kratom. This an interesting plant originated in Thailand causes both an amphetamine-like upper as well as a barbituate type of reaction depending on the amount consumed.

There was also something weird about the gun. When a semi-automatic handgun fires, the expended shell is expelled out of the barrel and another loaded round takes its place. In this case only one shot was fired but instead of the expended shell casing ejecting, it remained inside the barrel. It wasn’t sticking up like it got stuck, something that’s known as ‘stove piping’, but it just stayed completely in the chamber. The defense was using this as evidence that Steven’s hands were definitely on the gun and that her story that he could have jerked the gun while she held causing it to go off was plausible. The defense was claiming Barbara did not have the intent to kill Steven and that this was just a horrible accident. They abandoned their defense of diminished capacity and went with the testimony of a noted expert on Firearms, Glocks in particular, a fellow named Manny Kaplesohn. Barbara’s family hired private attorneys to represent her, A father-in-law/son-in-law team. The men were experienced criminal defense lawyers. The defense refused an offer of a guilty plea to 3rd degree murder and instead opted for trial. Because they were not going with the diminished capacity defense I could not use the testimony of my psychiatrists. Additionally, the defense was going to use Steven and Barbara’s expulsion from the cult as proof of Steven’s depression and suicidal mental state to show that Barbara was not responsible for his death.