GUILTY NJ - Barbara Vernieri, 70, murdered in her home, East Rutherford, 14 Sept 2012 *Retrial granted 2022

Even with the expected addition of new judges in Bergen County this fall, a trial is still months off for a Wood-Ridge man charged in the bludgeoning and burning of a 70-year-old East Rutherford realtor two years ago...

Potter is also still waiting for discovery evidence from prosecutors in the murder of Barbara Venieri at her home on Sept. 14, 2012, DeAvila-Silebi noted.

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Daniel Rochat, 41, appeared before Judge Margaret Foti in Superior Court in Hackensack for a conference in the case of the 2012 murder of Barbara Vernieri, whom he knew for decades because she worked at his father’s real estate office.

The motions, filed Friday, concern evidence collected from communications data, search warrants from the defendant’s home, car, and his parent’s residence, an East Ruthrford property and GPS evidence.

Foti scheduled oral arguments for the motions for Oct. 7 and said she will set a trial date for the case then, likely for the beginning of January.

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A 70-year-old woman who was beaten and set afire in her East Rutherford home in 2012 may have tried to crawl toward the door before she succumbed, a witness testified Wednesday in the trial of the Wood-Ridge man who is charged with murder in her death.

Sgt. John Frazer, who was a detective with the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office in 2012, testified on the second day of Daniel Rochat's trial in the death of Barbara Vernieri, who was employed as a real estate agent by his father.

The jury was also shown several sets of photographs, including images that Frazer described as showing that Vernieri had burns along her back, arms and legs and that her hair was gone, scorched by the fire. The photos were shown only to the jurors, the judge and the defendant.

The jurors remained stoic as they looked at the photographs, and Rochat looked at them quietly, displaying no emotion.

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The death of Barbara Vernieri was a case of a "beautiful life meeting a brutal and savage end" when she was killed in 2012, a prosecutor said Tuesday morning in opening arguments in Daniel Rochat's murder trial in Superior Court in Hackensack.

Rochat, a Wood-Ridge resident, is accused of beating Vernieri, 70, in her East Rutherford home and setting her on fire. He is charged with murder, aggravated arson, desecration of human remains, hindering apprehension and armed burglary.

David Malfitano, the assistant prosecutor, said that on Sept. 14, 2012, Vernieri's attacker “beat, battered and bruised her body” before she was “doused in gasoline and set on fire.”

The defense attorney, Jim Doyle, suggested that the prosecution was aiming for a verdict based on emotions.

Doyle told the jurors that they have to “determine the difference between real and competent evidence and what is emotional.”

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Sgt. John Frazer, who was a detective with the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office in 2012, continued his testimony on the third day of the trial, speaking to the physical evidence found at the scene. There were several large boxes filled with evidence wrapped in paper bags in the courtroom. A disassembled smoke detector was presented to the court, missing its batteries and plastic components. The smoke detector had already been dismantled before investigators got to the scene and the batteries and plastic components were found separated from the alarm, Frazer said.

Frazer also went into further detail about a roll of paper towels that had been found in the hallway. Frazer testified previously regarding the location of the roll of paper towels.

"From their appearance ... it appeared to be a trailer," Frazer said.

A trailer is a term that refers to an item that is used to spread fire from one area to another.

In addition to the smoke detector and roll of paper towels, the physical evidence presented included matches and a barbecue lighter found in a kitchen drawer, a jewelry box with blood on it, several items of jewelry in plastic bags and a carbon monoxide detector.

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Melissa Balogh, who works in the New Jersey State Police Office of Forensics, analyzed several pieces of evidence and hair samples found on Vernieri. Balogh performed two tests on the fabric from a green chair in the room where Vernieri was found, saying she found gasoline.

None of the hair found in the real estate agent's hand and on items including bedding and clothing was Rochat's, Balogh said.

Rochat's attorney Richard Potter cross-examined Balogh, focusing his questions on the statement that none of the hairs tested was Rochat's.

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A friend of Rochat's testified about the days before and after Vernieri's killing. Kristen Henke told David Malfitano, the assistant prosecutor, that she was with Rochat when Rochat's father called him on his cellphone. Rochat put the phone on speaker and his father told him that something had happened to Vernieri.

When asked about Rochat's reaction to his father's news, Henke said Rochat "was surprised" and said, "Wow, this is horrible." Malfitano asked Henke if it was unusual for Rochat to put his phone on speaker, and she told the prosecution it was unusual. As he left, Rochat asked Henke where he could donate a certain pair of shoes, she said.

Several days after Vernieri's killing on Sept. 19, Henke said, Rochat came to her house and asked if he could stay the night. Henke told him "absolutely not" and that she had previously spoken to the police.

Defense attorney Jim Doyle cross-examined Henke and asked about Rochat's demeanor. She said Rochat "seemed a little more stressed." Rochat did not tell her why he wanted to stay there with her, she said.

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When investigators asked Rochat on his whereabouts on Friday, Sept. 15 – the day Vernieri’s body was found – it appeared from the tape that Boesch found irregularities in his story.

Rochat said he woke up around 11 a.m. or noon on that Friday before getting a bagel in Lyndhurst and checking on an East Rutherford condo he and his father maintained for a family while they were out of the country. In the prosecution’s opening arguments, they alleged that Vernieri’s blood was found at the condo and Rochat had attempted to clean it up.

Investigators asked if Rochat had his phone with him on Friday, to which he replied he did, adding that it had “some issues.”

Authorities – who got a warrant for his cell phone records days prior – said his phone received a call at 10:39 a.m., which placed him on Shepard Terrace, where Vernieri’s home is located. In addition, police said in the tape, Vernieri’s phone received a call at 9:48 a.m. and was immediately turned off.

“You’re implying that I’m at Barbara’s house,” Rochat said on the tape.

“Yeah, I am,” the officer replied.

After being pressed by officers to explain why he was at Vernieri’s house, Rochat denied the authenticity of the cell phone data and stopped answering questions.

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Notes taken by Sgt. Gary Boesch, a detective working on Barbara Vernieri’s murder case in September 2012, became part of a legal argument late Wednesday afternoon that ended with Judge Margaret Foti ruling that certain pages from Boesch’s notebook could be submitted to Rochat’s defense attorneys.

Many of the pages in Boesch’s notebook did not contain explosive or unusual information — some were notes taken after officers served a search warrant to Rochat, and others had contact information for Rochat — but 10 pages did have notes taken by Boesch at Vernieri’s autopsy days after her death.

Foti told defense attorneys and the prosecution that she believed pages from the notebook that described Boesch’s “personal perception” of witness interviews or the crime scene — something she interpreted more “broadly” than the exact scene of the crime — would be submitted to the defense for review.

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Ultimately, 13 of the 24 pages of notes Boesch took were turned over to the defense.

“Most, if not all, of this information has been provided in one form or another,” Foti said, adding that much of the information was given during Boesch’s testimony.

Earlier in the day, the prosecution and defense continued questioning Boesch about his numerous interactions and subsequent arrest of Rochat

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A partial sample of DNA that statistically could belong to Daniel Rochat, the Wood-Ridge man accused of beating and murdering an elderly East Rutherford woman before setting her on fire in 2012, was found underneath her fingernails during an analysis, authorities testified on Thursday.

However, Rochat’s defense attorneys argued that the sample was too small – and it was unclear how the DNA got under Barbara Vernieri’s nails – making it impossible to definitively say that Rochat’s DNA was found on the victim.

A large portion of Thursday’s trial focused on the testimony of Kimberly Michalik, a forensic scientist with the New Jersey State Police, who analyzed samples of both Rochat and Vernieri’s DNA and other items of evidence from the scene of her murder in 2012.

During her testimony, Michalik said she found a partial match of DNA that could belong to Rochat – or any of his paternal relatives – under fingernails belonging to Vernieri. Michalik said her findings showed that Rochat “could not be excluded” as someone matching the DNA.

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Shoes found by authorities in the home of Daniel Rochat — the Wood-Ridge man accused of beating and killing an elderly East Rutherford woman and setting her on fire in 2012 — appeared to match a footprint impression lifted from the scene of her death, authorities testified on Tuesday.

Sgt. James Brazofsky, who was a detective with the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office in 2012, told the jury on Tuesday that two pairs of Adidas shoes found in Rochat’s apartment while authorities executed a search warrant had the same markings on the sole as a footprint impression found in Barbara Verneri’s home by authorities as they processed the crime scene.

“You can see the correspondence,” Brazofsky said to the jury, holding the shoe and an enlarged photo of the impression found at the crime scene, adding that the comparison between the two was “very obvious.”

Jim Doyle, one of Rochat’s defense attorneys, seemed to caution the jury that a match between the shoes and the impression was not a substantial piece of evidence — as it was not possible to know “when exactly” the impression was made in Verneri’s home.

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The murder trial of a man accused of beating and killing an elderly East Rutherford woman in 2012 will be skipping a week of testimony starting tomorrow.

After a brief cross-examination of a Bergen County Medical Examiner who testified on Tuesday, Judge Margaret Foti announced that the trial of Daniel Rochat, of Wood-Ridge, will begin again on May 16.

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One of the arresting officers, Lt. James McMorrow spent the morning on the stand going over everything from when he received the call about the murder to the eventual arrest of Rochat.

There was a strong odor of gas present and blood in the home as well as the body, he said. He spent time in the backyard and canvassed the neighborhood before going to speak to one of Vernieri's friends in Wallington.

McMorrow first made contact with Rochat on Sept. 18 when he went with his partner to speak to him. They spoke to Rochat in his living room because he did not agree to come in for questioning. While in his apartment, they noticed sneakers similar to the ones that left footprints at the scene.

They had warrants to search his place as well as his person and his data records so they questioned him on why he said he was asleep when his phone was near Vernieri's home at the time of the murder. Rochat stopped communicating with them after that.

They began surveillance on Rochat and tracked his vehicles with a warranted GPS. When they first tried to arrest him, he did not comply to their requests.

They had to physically remove him from his truck and he refused to place hands back. They forced him to the ground and he still struggled, maintaining eye contact the entire time, McMorrow said.

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A timeline of phone records was used to establish Rochat's whereabouts. His cellphone pinged a tower very close to Vernieri's house and not in Wood-Ridge, where he had told police he was asleep at the time of the slaying, McMorrow said.

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Nine fingerprints and partial fingerprints were found at the scene, according to Stallone, who added that they fingerprinted the people present at the scene to eliminate any of their fingerprints. Stallone said the fingerprints were run through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS, and eventually compared with Rochat's. Rochat's fingerprints did not match any of the ones found at the scene.

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The murder trial of a Wood-Ridge man continued Wednesday with a focus on DNA evidence, including testimony from a New York Police Department criminologist.

Detective John Dilkes of the Bergen County Sheriff's Office crime scene unit took the witness stand to go over the results of the leuco crystal violet testing at the Van Winkle Avenue condo.

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None of the fingerprints found at the scene of an East Rutherford slaying belonged to Daniel Rochat, who is on trial for murder in the death of a a 70-year-old woman, an expert testified Thursday.

Sgt. Marc Metzinger, a member of the Bergen County Sheriff’s Office’s crime scene unit and an expert in fingerprint identification and analysis, was in charge of collecting latent fingerprints at the crime scene. A total of nine fingerprints were found in the bathroom, basement, hallway and dining area, Metzinger testified.

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Earlier in the morning, Erica Kliman-Shelley, a friend and former girlfriend of Rochat testified. She said she called Rochat’s cellphone the morning of Sept. 14 at 10:39 a.m. She had left Rochat a voicemail and had sent a text message to him immediately afterward asking him to call. He called her back at 11:07 a.m. and they spoke about whether he was going to a beach home in Toms River.

Rochat’s attorney, Jim Doyle, asked about the tone of Rochat’s voice when Kliman-Shelley spoke with him. She he had spoken in his normal voice and there had been nothing out of the ordinary about the phone call.

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Special Agent Ajit David, an expert in historical cell site analysis, testified Wednesday that Rochat’s phone was in the area of Vernieri’s home cell tower the day she died. Using real-time technology data [RTT] gathered from phone records for Vernieri and Rochat provided by Verizon Wireless, David said he was able to determine that Vernieri’s last phone activity occurred at 9:49 a.m. and was located .19 miles away from the Verizon cellphone tower near her home. Using the same data, David said that at 10:39 a.m., Rochat received a phone call that pinged off the same tower and sector as Vernieri’s call and was about the same distance away.

David said it would have been impossible for Rochat’s phone to interact with Vernieri’s home tower in that same sector if it were in his apartment on Hackensack Street, over a mile away. David testified that he has used RTT data successfully a number of times to locate people in real time during a variety of different cases. David did acknowledge that RTT data are less accurate than GPS data and that RTT data give the best estimate of where the phone is located.

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Slain real estate agent Barbara Vernieri "loved" Daniel Rochat, Gene Rochat, father of the man accused of beating her to death, said Tuesday when he was called as the first witness for the defense.

Daniel Rochat of Wood-Ridge is being tried on murder charges in the beating death of Vernieri, whose body was set afire in her home on Sept. 14, 2012.

But the defendant's father said he and the victim had been talking about his son the day before Vernieri was killed.

"She loved Dan," Gene Rochat told the courtroom.

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The defendant's father said he had spoken to his son and had seen him the day Vernieri was killed. Gene Rochat said he had asked his son if he was going to the family's house in Toms River. When Daniel Rochat stopped by the office, Gene Rochat said, he gave his son $100 in gas and pocket money. Later that day he informed his son that Vernieri had "died in a mysterious way."

Gene Rochat described his son's reaction as "shocked."

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