GUILTY NJ - Rose Twells, 86, beaten to death, Woodbury, 18 Dec 1979

mysteriew

A diamond in process
Joined
Jul 22, 2004
Messages
23,811
Reaction score
780
The Rose Twells killing was creepy, beastly even, the subject of rumors and speculation, cloaked in the kind of mystery that makes for an engrossing episode of Law & Order or CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

And it's just as compelling today as it was 25 years ago, when Twells was beaten to death in her Woodbury mansion. Perhaps more so because of how the case unfolded in the intervening years.

Tomorrow, jury selection begins in the 1979 whodunit that rattled high society in the two-square-mile Gloucester County seat.

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/states/new_jersey/11656049.htm
 
A man accused of killing the widow of a former mayor while a teenager has been convicted in the slaying that shocked this Gloucester County town 25 years ago.

Jeffrey Bayer, now 41, was found guilty on Friday of felony murder in the December 1979 slaying of Rose Twells, whose battered body was found bound to a staircase banister in her home.

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local...0,1497234.story?coll=nyc-regionhome-headlines
 
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/states/new_jersey/11740538.htm

"He's friendly, and he's kind," she said. "He was always open and honest with me. I don't know. He always did nice things."

Bayer would help her with her rent, fix things around the apartment, clean. He would go to her father's house in Washington Township and cut the grass, she said.

"And he was always good around my kids," Foulke said.

Which is why, she said, she knows he did not kill Twells.
 
As the jury ended its first day of deliberation with no decision, the town buzzed with guilty-or-innocent predictions. From the hallways of the Gloucester County Justice Complex to the lunch counters at restaurants, people chewed on the evidence against Bayer presented over five days of testimony.

The case against Bayer was 25 years in the making. Shortly after Rose Twells was found dead in her Woodbury mansion on Dec. 20, 1979, locals gossiped that Bayer, the town troublemaker and the mayor's son, was involved in the botched burglary. Twells, the widow of a former mayor, was in her 80s and lived alone.

At age 16, Bayer was well known to police, and generations of detectives worked to prove his guilt. Now 41, he is charged with murder and felony murder and faces life in prison if convicted.

But a guilty verdict is not viewed as a sure thing, not even by prosecutors, who have acknowledged that no physical evidence links Bayer to the crime.

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/states/new_jersey/11750510.htm
 
From June 2008:

http://www.nj.com/south/index.ssf/2008/06/bayer_conviction_upheld_in_197.html

The Appellate Division of New Jersey Superior Court today affirmed the July 2005 conviction of Jeffrey K. Bayer in the December 1979 beating death of 86-year-old Woodbury widow Rose Twells.

The three-judge appellate panel rejected arguments that the trial judge in the Bayer case made an error by letting the jury hear allegedly prejudicial information about the defendant, failed to declare a mistrial on the basis of the prosecutor's closing arguments and imposed an excessively-long sentence of 30 years in prison on the first-degree murder conviction...

The Gloucester County Prosecutor's Office in June 2003 charged Bayer, 41, Clifford Jeffery, 44 and Mark English, 42, with bludgeoning Rose Twells during a burglary on Dec. 18, 1979. It was the only unsolved homicide in Woodbury history. Twells was the widow of a former Woodbury mayor. Bayer was the son of a past Woodbury mayor.

Haven't yet managed to find whatever became of the other two perps, who were equally as guilty of committing this vicious crime according to the narrative at link.
 

Members online

Online statistics

Members online
164
Guests online
959
Total visitors
1,123

Forum statistics

Threads
589,935
Messages
17,927,866
Members
228,005
Latest member
vigilandy
Back
Top