Bill Moyers Journal; 410; Death of a Family

BILL MOYERS' JOURNAL

"Death of a Family"

April 9, 1979

TEENAGE CHILDREN IN ONE OUT OF TEN AMERICAN FAMILIES HIT, BEAT, STAB OR SHOOT THEIR PARENTS.

THERE ARE 4.7 MILLION FAMILIES IN THE UNITED STATES IN WHICH AT LEAST ONE PARENT IS THE VICTIM OF PHYSICAL VIOLENCE BY A CHILD.

From a study by RICHARD J. GELLES, University of Rhode Island

BILL MOYERS: Judy Hillis and Peggy Neufeld are next-door neighbors in Montvale, New Jersey. They share the memory of an unforgettable Sunday.

JUDY HILLIS: I had gotten up fairly late and come into the dining room to get the Sunday paper. And from this exact point in the dining room you can see the De La Roche house. And I glanced up as I was picking up the paper, and I saw ropes all along the property, with little... what appeared to be signs. And from television and seeing these ropes and signs, I assumed the signs said, "Crime Scene." Finally I'd seen people running down the street. So I opened the door, and a young boy was going by, and I said, "Has something happened?" And he said, "Yes, someone was shot.

PEGGY NEUFELD: There were police cars like crazy all over the place, and I called a friend who was a reporter. And I asked if they knew what was going on down at the De La Roche house. And I was told that there had been a shooting. And I said, "Oh, my God, was anybody hurt?" I was then told that they were all shot and killed.

HILLIS: It just seemed that someone had come in... and murdered an entire family of people that we knew.

MOYERS In fact, it was one of the three sons of that family who that evening was accused of the murders. This is the story of the family who lived here, a family destroyed from within. It is a story of violence, and a search for the origins of that violence. It is the story of one family that speaks to many.

I'm Bill Moyers.

MOYERS: This is Montvale, New Jersey, population 8800, fifteen miles from New York City, twenty-five from Newark. You can commute to work by car, bus or train.

Montvale has all the attributes of a modern American suburb: quiet, tree-lined streets with large, expensive houses; a garden club, an Elks club, churches, a community swimming pool. It also has quiet, tree-lined streets with smaller, less expensive houses; a business district, light industry, and a rash of corporate headquarters. But Montvale's largest industry is children, four to five thousand of them. And when they aren't attending one of its three schools, many of them can be found practicing or playing on one of the town athletic league's six football teams, fourteen soccer teams, forty-six softball and baseball teams, or six cheering squads.

Then, two years ago, Montvale had something else: a shocking, brutal murder. It happened here, in the house. of the Harry De La Roche family At about four o'clock on a Sunday morning, just three days after Thanksgiving, 1976, police found three of the five members of the family shot dead.

Harry, shot in the head, lay face down on his son Ronald's bed. His wife, Mary Jane, with two bullet holes in her ear, was found in her bed. Eric, twelve, had been shot and bludgeoned to death in the room he shared with Ronald. Ronald, fifteen, was nowhere to be found. Harry, Jr., eighteen, the oldest of the three De La Roche sons, had brought the police to the house. A college freshman at The Citadel, a South Carolina military academy, Harry, Jr. was home on Thanksgiving vacation.

Police sent out an alarm for the missing fifteen-year- old, Ronald, and as word got around that Ronald was being sought for the murders, people in Montvale wondered how such a thing could happen.

NEUFELD: I could not believe...that someone that you loved so deeply and who you assumed loved you as well, could have so much hatred obviously building up inside that they would want to kill you

.

MOYERS: Judy Hillis.

HILLIS: My immediate reaction on hearing this was, how can you know someone so well, or think you know someone so well, your own child, and not know them at all?

MOYERS: A friend of the De La Roche family, Carl Ciccarello.

CARL CICCARELLO: The De La Roche family were all a very close-knit family, they all loved each other, respected each other; and Harry and Mary Jane were an ideal couple. They went and did everything together. They went bowling together, they went to parties together, they went to dinner together very, very often. They entertained, and they were both gracious hosts.

HILLIS: When there was work to be done outside, the whole family was outside doing it. I do know that they were active in town with sports, recreation, and things like that; you could see the boys in their uniforms. Mary Jane I knew only through activities that we both belonged in, and she seemed very happy and satisfied with her life. She seemed to think well of her children. I mean, I never heard her complain about them in any way. And from outside appearances, it appeared like it was a normal, happy, healthy family.

MOYERS The first sign of anything wrong came when Harry, Jr. brought a policeman here to the house. It was four o'clock in the morning. Harry said he had come home and found his family dead. The policeman went into the house and found the three bodies. Harry said his father and Ronald had had a fight earlier that night. He said he didn't know where Ronald was.

Within minutes, the house swarmed with police. Harry, Jr. was taken to the Montvale Police Station to tell what had happened. Richard Salkin was then an assistant Bergen County prosecutor.

RICHARD SALKIN: You know, in recreating what took place, everything seemed to be if you could say such a thing in that context on the up and up.

Young man comes home, his family's dead, he goes to seek help, he brings help to the house, and he relates the story about Ronald. They start asking Harry about the whereabouts of Ronald. They're just looking for information, they're looking for leads. Where might Ronald be? Who are his friends?

MOYERS: Harry called one friend from the police station, Jeff DeCausemacker.

JEFF DECAUSEMACKER: He said, you know, "Deke, you have to help me find my brother.

And I said, "Well, Harry, I'll do what I can. It sounded at the time that he was either crying or was about to -- you know, very choked up.

MOYERS: Then, police at the De La Roche house found Ronald, shot dead, his body crammed into a metal case hidden in the attic. They notified the police at headquarters, where Harry was being questioned.

SALKIN: They were talking to Harry in this conference room, and they were informed at that point: Ronnie's body has been found in the attic in a like a footlocker, and maybe we ought to start reevaluating our thinking. They quickly conferred and decided: wrap up the statement, which they did; asked a couple more questions, concluded the statement; and again, as it had been done that morning, asked Harry if he'd be willing to take a lie detector polygraph to verify his story. Harry indicated he would, he said yes, he would. And at this point, of course, Harry has not been advised that Ronald's body has been found. At this point there's no question that Harry is a suspect. And they leave. They leave in an unmarked police car, and they start down from Montvale to Hackensack.

They arrive at the courthouse, Harry's introduced to Lieutenant Bert Allmers, one of the polygraph -- lie detector experts in the office. The waiver of rights form was given to Harry and explained to him by Allmers, giving him his rights, right to remain silent, right to an attorney, right to have an attorney appointed for him if he couldn't afford one: Miranda warnings. And in this case, since it was a polygraph form, it probably goes even a little bit further than Miranda in advising a person of their rights: You don't even have to talk to us, you can leave, you can get up and leave if you want. Harry read it and Harry signed it, I believe in triplicate.

At that point, I believe Allmers informed Harry that Ronald's body had been found. De La Roche is questioned on the lie detector, on the polygraph; Allmers leaves the room a couple of times to review the charts. I believe Harry said, "Well, how did I do?" And Allmers responded something like, "Well, how do you think you did?" or, "You're lying; I think you killed your family. And if I recall, De La Roche's response at that point was, "Well, how much time will I get for the murders?"

And he proceeded at that time to relate an oral confession to Allmers.

They again advise Harry De La Roche of his rights to remain silent, the Miranda warnings. The court reporter arrives, and Harry De La Roche confessed to the murders...in, quite frankly, incredible detail.

MOYERS: Harry's confession takes up twenty-one typed pages. In it he tells of being hazed as a freshman cadet at the military academy, The Citadel. He admits lying about his mother's health to get away from the school early for Thanksgiving; of being unable to tell his father that he couldn't go back to school, because, as he puts it, "You couldn't talk to him. He wouldn't listen. He would hit first and ask questions later. He says, "I was just trying to think of some way to get out of going to The Citadel. And I came in, three o'clock, and it was seven hours before I had to leave for the plane, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. And then the details:

VOICE: I had the pistol on the bed. I was sitting in my room for a while, thinking of what I was going to do, thinking I can't go back, and I really couldn't tell my parents because they wouldn't listen. So I seen my father, so I kept walking back and forth from the entrance to my room to the entrance of my parents' room. Walked in there, said, "No, I can't." Walked back to my room. Sat down for a little while. Kept on doing it. Finally I walked into my parents' room, got real close to my father. Must have stood in his room about a half hour, just holding the pistol up. And then finally I said, "I can't go back." Closed my eyes, and I pulled the trigger. And that set it off. Shot my mother right then. And then I went into my brother's room, Ronnie. When I turned on the light Ronnie was laying on the side of his bed. His eyes were open, like he was in shock, like he didn't know what was happening. I guess he didn't. shot him, and I went over to Eric. Eric started to get up. Shot him twice. He was still getting up, and then he started to go back down on his bed. Then I went back to my room and just sat there for a few minutes. Then I heard some really heavy breathing, and I thought, "Oh, my God." Went back into my brothers' room, and there was Eric. He was getting up and trying to get out. He was saying he was saying something, I couldn't hear him. I put my hand over his eyes and put my hands over his eyes. I said, "Eric, go to sleep, go to sleep, it's just a dream," trying to calm him down. Then he got up and he started screaming, and I hit him with the pistol butt in the head. Then he went down to the ground. I hit him again and he was still breathing. And the second time I hit him, he wasn't breathing anymore.

MOYERS: There was more. He said he had hidden Ronald's body in the attic to make it seem that Ronald had done it. He moved his father's body to Ronald's bed to account for the blood there. He told where he'd hidden his bloody clothes, where he'd hid the gun. Everything was found where Harry said it would be. Harry De La Roche, Jr. was arraigned that evening in Montvale's Municipal Building, just fifteen hours after the murders had been committed.

Afterwards, the family's Lutheran minister, the Reverend K. Roy Nilsen, talked with him.

Rev. K. ROY NILSEN: Harry made no admissions, other than, "Pastor, I've just flipped. And I guess at that moment I thought of him, frankly, more as a son of mine than any other relationship. And I assured him that I would be with him and help in any way I could, and that I thought I could say that that goes for the congregation as well.

MOYERS: After his meeting with Harry, Pastor Nilsen called a parishioner, John Taylor, who practices law in the neighboring suburb of Park Ridge. Taylor agreed to represent Harry, and he met him the next day at the bail hearing.

JOHN TAYLOR: I really don't know to this day whether or not he knew who I was, what I was, and the purpose of my being there. It was really a helter-skelter of affairs. The boy was in a tremendous emotional state. I don't think we got three words out of him.

MOYERS: Harry was held at the Bergen County Jail in Hackensack. Bail, set at $250,000, could not be raised. On one of Pastor Nilsen's visits, Harry had something new to say.

NILSEN: He said, "I really need to tell you something." There was a noticeable difference in his willingness to communicate, and it was at that time that he told me his story, or what I'll call his story, that he had indeed killed his brother Ronnie, but only after having come home and found his mother and father dead, Eric dying, and in a kind of rage and with what again would be an understandable reaction, picked up the gun and shot his brother.

TAYLOR: And he said suddenly he realized, What have I done? Nobody will believe me. In other words, who's here to say that I did not kill everybody? Then I don't know what machinations took place in his mind, because we do know that subsequently he said to me that to cover up

the blood in Ronald's bed, because that's the one that he had actually slain, that he decided that he would have to put his father's body in the bed. It's interesting to note that of all the bodies there's only one he tried to hide. He then carried Ronald's body upstairs and did in fact put it in the attic.

NILSEN: When he had made the first confession he was just so tired. Tired, exhausted, and he said, "The whole idea was beginning to hit me, and he said, "Frankly, Pastor, I would have said anything...just to get it done and over with. He said, "My life was over, the family gone, you know, and I was tired. He said, "Frankly, I would have said anything."

SALKIN: An entire case is in that confession. You have De La Roche describing those famous words. deliberation, weighing of the consequences, premeditation, the plan, the execution of the plan, the whys, the wherefores, why this all came to be, how it happened, how he felt about it.

MOYERS: Defense attorney John Taylor had Harry examined by a psychiatrist, Dr. David Gallina.

Dr. DAVID GALLINA: Harry, perhaps because of his stay in jail, per- haps because of his anxiety about what had happened and what might happen to him, for reasons of his own, throughout the entire evaluation essentially gave back to me both versions of what happened that evening. At times he admitted the entire episode. It was my feeling, however, that when one considered his mental status and his activity within the context of what was happening within his family, that he was operating in a psychotic state at that moment.

MOYERS: The prosecution's psychiatrist was Dr. Joseph Zigarelli.

SALKIN: Dr. Zigarelli indicated in his report, after all the other findings were in, that what he was dealing with in Mr. De La Roche was a person with a personality disorder, he was not dealing with a psychotic person.

MOYERS Harry De La Roche, Jr. was tried for the murder of his parents and two brothers in this Bergen County Courtroom in January 1978. As in all trials, certain moments stood out. One came when the prosecution introduced into evidence police photographs of the murder victims taken in the De La Roche house.

DANIEL MCCARTHY: They...depicted, in living color, the bodies, their positions, and the aftereffects of being very grossly injured, in some cases, and they were not pleasant to look at.

MOYERS: Daniel McCarthy and Mary Flexon were members of the jury.

MARY FLEXON : Harry's reactions to these pictures of his family amazed me, that he was so calm and didn't bother him in the least. He almost appeared, as he turned one picture over and looked and studied the details of another, that he was looking through a magazine. He showed no emotion whatsoever.

MOYERS: Then came the confession.

SALKIN: I made the decision that I would offer the confession at the latter part of the case, believing it to be the strongest item of evidence in the State's case and wanting to have that impact upon the jury.

FLEXON: I had no idea there was a confession coming, and it certainly had a big impact on all of us. Everybody in the courtroom's face was still, and...shocked. I myself was shocked.

MOYERS:When the prosecution rested its case, Harry's confession was fresh in the minds of the jury. John Taylor attempted to refute that confession with testimony from the defendant.

TAYLOR: We put Harry on the stand and let Harry tell his story... as to what had happened.

SALKIN: Mr. De La Roche's testimony was basically an attempt to repudiate his confession. The story now was, No, no, I didn't kill my family, here's what happened. I came home, I walked in, I walked upstairs, I saw my brother sitting on the end of the bed, I walked into his room, saw Eric dead, went back into my parents' room, saw them dead, went in, spoke somewhat to Ronald, who was acting in an unusual manner, dazed; I realize now what had happened, I went into a rage, I picked up the gun, I killed Ronald. And my immediate response was, I'm going to be blamed for all four. And therefore the actions are taken: the secreting and transportation of the bodies, the wiping up of blood, the changing of clothes.

TAYLOR: And the State cross-examined him and there was a battle of wits between the two of them, which I was a little sorry for. But then the State ended up letting Harry go from the stand. And then I called my final witness, Dr. Gallina.

GALLINA: At the time at which he asked me what Harry had said to me concerning the events of that night, and when I indicated essentially that both versions of the story had been told to me but that Harry had indicated at times that he did indeed shoot his mother and father and his two brothers, at that point there was an immediate recess.

SALKIN: There was a hearing out of the presence of the jury, and Mr. Taylor indicated the defense was now going forward with an insanity defense as to all four of the murders on Harry De La Roche's behalf.

GALLINA: I went through in as great a concrete detail as possible an itemization of the occurrences immediately preceding these events and some background information about Harry and his family which hopefully would put this into perspective as to what had happened; and to indicate that the facts certainly could substantiate the coming together of emotional and family forces which reached such a peak of explosiveness with- in Harry that he was rendered psychotic, legally, at the time that these acts were committed.

MCCARTHY: To be declared legally insane a defendant has to not be aware of the consequences of his actions and not know the difference between right and wrong. And in the case, in the testimony that was brought out during the course of the trial, the defendant stated that he had stood over his parents' bed for fifteen minutes or so and had sat on his own bed for about a half an hour, as I recall, before he went in and shot them. And that certainly said to me that he knew the consequences of his actions and was figuring out what he was going to do as a consequence of his actions, and certainly knew that it was wrong to be doing what he was planning to do. And the whole plea of not guilty by reason of insanity just fell apart.

MOYERS: Harry De La Roche, Jr. was convicted of first degree murder on all four counts of the indictment. He was given a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment on each count, but permitted to serve all four sentences simultaneously. But if the trial had decided who committed the murders and how, it did not answer the question of why. And it left largely unchanged the way Montvale remembered the De La Roche family.

Mr. JOHN ROTHSCHILD: Harry, Sr. was a good citizen in the town of Montvale. He was,

as far as I was concerned, a nice guy who raised a good family, worked hard, and didn't have much money never would have had much money. He was just a hard worker. He had to scrape to make ends meet with three boys, and Harry, Sr. just wanted the best he could get for his family. And Mary Jane was the same way; they both worked equally as hard together to get to where they were going.

Mrs. JOHN ROTHSCHILD: The De La Roche's home was a very modest home. It was I don't know how many years old, but it was an older home, right in the center of Montvale, walking distance to everything, which was very convenient. It was very modestly furnished. Mrs. De La Roche was a very active reader, so there were a lot of paperbacks around.

She used to go to the library and garage sales to buy a twenty-five-cent paperback because she read so much.

Mr. ROTHSCHILD: They weren't too well off. They had a couple of old cars, and you know, college today costs a lot of money, he had three sons and he didn't have he had a good job, but not that well-paying, I don't imagine. He never gave the outward appearance of having a lot of money.

Mrs. ROTHSCHILD: Whenever she saw some material on sale she would buy that, and she had like a big carton of it. I said, "What are you doing with all this material?" "Well, she said, "this way I have it handy and when I need a dress in two hours I can quickly whip one up. This is the kind of sewing she did. Everything she wore, she made.

"

MOYERS (over shot of plaque on wall -- "Bless Harry, Mary Jane, Ronnie and Eric in Heaven"):

Harry, Sr.'s cousin, John De La Roche.

JOHN DE LA ROCHE: Harry did a lot for the community. He never could do enough. He used to donate every weekend to that community, every weekend. Little League, Boy Scouts; he used to take them on trips up in the mountains camping, stay out with them. Who does that sort of thing? Gee. Oh, church activities...just about every involvement you can think of in a town, he would get involved in, and his wife, too, you know. it, you know.

They didn't get paid for it; they did it because they were decent human beings. See, this all proves it, it ain't just me saying it. The facts are there. I mean, people might be looking at me,

I look at that mug, what does he know, this and that, he's prejudiced toward Big Harry, he loved him. Sure, I loved him. But...the facts. Let's just go on the facts. I'm willing to do that.

MOYERS (over shot of Fieldstone Middle School): Many facts lie in the past, in the days that Harry, Jr. attended this Montvale elementary school with a boyhood friend, Bob Gantt.

BOB GANTT: At the time when I first met him he was about my size, kind of a smaller individual, and he was always very friendly -- I thought so, anyhow. Because of his size, I guess, some of the more athletic kids or some of the bigger kids took advantage of him, you know, made fun of .him, mocked him. He was subject to some mockery and ridicule.

MOYERS: Jeff DeCausemacker.

DeCAUSEMACKER: People would take a pen and, like, punch it through his book, or something like that. Or hide his books on him.

MOYERS: Norman Vick was a year older than Harry.

NORMAN VICK: One time I remember, it was at a Boy Scout meeting which was at night. The meeting had broken up and most of the people had gone; we were waiting for our parents to pick us up. Harry had brought a basketball with him. A friend of mine threw it up on the roof of the school. There was a ladder lying around. He put up the ladder, went up on top of the roof to get it, and my friend knocked the ladder over, we left, Harry was up on the roof yelling, waiting for his father to come to help him down.

DeCAUSEMACKER: I had a lot of respect for him because it was just that he...would impress me as being an intelligent person for being able to withstand all of these pressures, for being, you know, being able to be a cut above the other people. He was not going to stoop low enough to, you know, just return that type of callous remark that he would receive. Maybe it was that he didn't know how to. Maybe it was just that he felt insecure about coming back out and lashing back out.

GANTT: It seemed that the kids would call him a name or push him up against a locker, make him look like a sissy, because they probably thought he was kind of a sissy; and they would get away with it because they knew they could, because Harry really wouldn't hurt a fly back then. He never fought back.

GALLINA: Much of his behavior could be called compliance, wherein he would be at times bothered, perhaps tormented, by peers or by associates that he knew in the community, and rarely if ever would fight back or commit overtly hostile acts.

VICK: One thing about him is that no matter how much he was picked on he would always come back for more. He would not avoid the people that would pick on him, which is amazing to me, because that's the first thing that a small boy does, he tries to avoid the people that really pick on him.

MOYERS: But John De La Roche saw no problems in Harry, Jr.

DE LA ROCHE: What problems? I mean, what problems? The kid had a beautiful home, he had loving parents. He had two beautiful brothers. What problems did he have that anyone else growing up doesn't have?

MOYERS: Laura Tuten was a neighbor of Harry's.

LAURA TUTEN: I never really met anybody that liked Harry. None of the young kids, none of them. Everybody used to talk about beating him up, "Oh, let's go pick on Harry. Even my brother's friends, they remember Harry and they still talk about beating him up, what they used to do to him when he was younger. Destroying his property, his school books, and .you know, like the kid was just a weakling in school; everybody knew that he couldn't stand on his own two feet, and everybody pushed him around. I think that's the worst thing to happen to a kid. He was just like a punching bag. That's all he was all of his life, was a punching bag for other kids.

VICK: They would always play dodgeball, all the boys get together in a big circle and throw this soft rubber ball at each other. At least every other time Harry would end up getting punched in the mouth or getting hit with the ball, somebody else would pick up the ball, hit him with that, he'd end up leaving the game. That was pretty much a constant thing. It was not dodgeball, it was pick on Harry time. When they played soft-ball he was always the last person to be picked, they always stuck him off in an area on the field where he would not be involved with anything.

MOYERS: He did no better in Little League baseball with his father as manager. Carl Ciccarello.

CICCARELLO: Harry, Jr. wasn't much of an athlete. He played baseball because it was required of him. In that family they all participated. If his father said, You play baseball, you played baseball.

--

DE LA ROCHE: He didn't push them to listen.He just wanted them to be happy. He loved them. He encouraged them.

CICCARELLO : With Ronnie and Eric it was great because they enjoyed it and they were quite good at it. But Harry admitted himself that he was not an athlete and didn't care for it. Didn't stick around after the games were over. Most kids, if the game is over, they rush over to the refreshment stand and they shoot the bull for a while and have soda or something, but Harry wouldn't, he'd just walk away and...it was noticeable then that he was not a mixer; he didn't care too much. And at that time his father made no bones about it, and he actually told him it's un-American not to play baseball. That's how Harry felt about base- ball, that everybody does it.

MOYERS: Stanley Furman knew Harry, Sr. through the Little Leagues.

STANLEY FURMAN: When I first heard the news that Mr. and Mrs. De La Roche and their sons Ronnie and Eric had been murdered, and that their other son, Harry, Jr., had reported this to the police, and prior to any accusations that he might have done it, I told my wife that I wouldn't be at all surprised if Harry, Jr. had done the murders, primarily because of the experiences I had had in my meetings with Harry, Sr. while he was managing and I was coaching on the same team in the Little Leagues. It seemed to me that the way he treated his son Ronnie, if he had been my father, while I don't think I would have murdered him, I would have been very sorely tempted to take a poke at him. Because he had no compunction about abusing Ronnie verbally in front of anyone and everyone who might have been there when Ronnie made an error in the field or struck out or made out at bat. He would holler at him at the top of his lungs, "How could you play so badly? How could you make an error like that? How can you be so stupid?" and et cetera. I felt that if he treated Ronnie the way he did, and if he treated his other son, the living son, Harry, the same way, that he could have reached a breaking point and done this thing; I felt it was ily understandable.

DE LA ROCHE: Awright, he'd yell, everybody'd yell once in a while. Or maybe slap somebody on the ass or something. So what? But he was incapable of ever really hurting anyone. I never knew Harry to have a fight in his whole life. Now, that's something to say about a man.

CICCARELLO: Now, Harry showed favoritism in one respect only, really. Ronnie, his boy and most managers agree with me was not much of a third baseman. But his father thinks that he was real all-star caliber. And Harry went so far as to do away with errors: Ronnie booted a ball he'd call it a base hit, and if Ronnie missed the ball it was a bad throw. And he was very devoted to his kids, and they could do no wrong, really.

Mr. ROTHSCHILD: I'm sure that Harry, Sr. didn't want to see any problems in Harry, Jr. or any of his boys, not just Harry, Jr.

I think Harry, Sr. wanted a perfect family and if there was a problem he'd try to hide it.

FURMAN: Harry, Sr., he wanted his kids to be what he wanted them to be, whether they could do it or not, whether they had the ability or not. And he was going to do his damnedest to see that they were.

GALLINA: One might say that there was a kind of overcompensation in the masculine area, in the realm of assertiveness, of being able to take care of oneself; almost a kind of paranoia on the part of the family, and Harry's father particularly, that someone or people or other masculine figures might infringe on your territory, that you might succumb and be passive before society; and that at all costs, for himself as well as for his son, there was a stringent and rigid expectation that he would always be on top of this, that he would always be able to handle himself in a very strong fashion...in a military fashion, in a military bearing; that he would have power masculine-type power.

I think that a natural extension of this was just the presence of the firearms, for example, which the family as a whole possessed.

Capt. HAROLD HAGENS (in police car): Car three- three-two to headquarters, I'll be on a special detail for a few minutes.

MOYERS: Captain Harold Hagens is in charge of the target range in nearby Park Ridge.

HAGENS: I remember when Harry, Jr. and his father first came down to the range.

We had started a new class to teach kids how to shoot properly, safely. And his father brought either one or two of his pistols when he came down, and shot with Harry with the pistol; he showed him how to shoot a revolver. This is the range, here.

GALLINA (over scene of youngsters shooting at target range): Harry indicated that the family always had guns around the house. They were always there, they were the equalizers, they were the means by which these men would essentially be men, in the sense of protecting what was theirs and to be used to defend the family and the home against people: people who would intrude. And Harry grew up, I think, in the context of owning weapons for this purpose.

DE LA ROCHE: He taught his kids how to shoot a gun. So what?The police knew them, and them guns were registered. Everything was completely on the up and up. You know, guns can be used for good. I mean, if cops didn't have guns, who the hell would listen to them? You'll say, well that's different. I don't think so. 'Cause a cop can't be in your home twenty-four hours a day, and you want that family protected. Teaching your kids how to shoot? So what?

GANTT: In high school Harry and I began to drift apart, kind of go our separate ways, because he started getting into things that I really didn't approve of, things that weren't for me, such as smoking marijuana.

Mr. ROTHSCHILD: And he was a hell-raiser with cars; they were constantly broken down, and he came into the station and I repaired them, and I said to him, "Why do you take all your frustrations out in your automobiles?" And he said, you know, "It's just the way I drive. He wanted the fastest car and the best car, and they were constantly torn up.

CICCARELLO : Harry wanted to be a mechanic. He wanted to be an automobile expert. He always tinkered with his own car. He was always taking it apart and putting it together again.

Mr. ROTHSCHILD: And I got Harry a job on the Garden State Parkway, because he had trouble finding a job.

DeCAUSEMACKER: He was very pleased with getting the job. Harry was like, "Hey, Dad, I got the job, it's, you know, great. His father was upset because he hadn't found out about, like, the medical plan, the pay scale.

GALLINA: He had notions of how Harry should comport himself around other people, of the kind of authoritative leadership that he should exhibit at all times.

CICCARELLO: Harry was the head man when it came to the kids, I'm sure. He told them what they should do and what they shouldn't do. He more or less dictated their way of life. And since Mary Jane always went along with it, I assumed that her feeling was the same. But I've never seen her be harsh on the kids. He has, you know, ridden heavy on them once in a while, but I've never seen him beat them or mistreat them. He used verbal abuse rather than physical abuse on them.

DE LA ROCHE: As far as anybody saying that he was some sort of tyrant or something, I want to set that straight once and for all, 'cause nobody knows him better than me. Nobody. Because I lived with him, slept with him, went to shows with him, went away to the farm in the summertime with him; we were constant companions, awright? during our childhood. Now, he was almost five years older than me. Now, if he was a bully or a tyrant, or anything like that, wouldn't I know it? You're damn right. Never touched me, never showed no aggressive tendencies, nothing. Because he was beautiful, gentle, kind...everything good you can say about a person.

MOYERS: Harry De La Roche, Sr., grew up in this neighborhood of Weehawken, New Jersey. He was an illegitimate child, raised by his unmarried mother and his grandmother. With no father of his own, his first experience with fatherhood would come when he had children of his own.

John De La Roche

DE LA ROCHE: He was brought up very well by his mother, very well. We were all poor, you know; nobody had no money. Harry lived in a small three-room, two-family, the heat was by an old iron stove. But yet his mother and my grandmother, when I slept there they would always let us sleep in the pullout couch, we'd pull it out nearer the stove. And they would always sleep in the cold bedroom in the back. And he had all fine friends, just like he was, see, because fineness draws fineness. And he was a good student. Graduated high school, went in the Navy, got an honorable discharge. When he got out he got a job. Well, he worked for Singer Sewing Machine, that's where he met his wife. She was a little older, but it didn't make no difference. They loved each other; they had a courtship, they got married. They got a little house in Lodi, Avenue F out there. And a little house, you know, and they start to raise a family, you know. He went to nightschool it took him eight years to graduate. You talk about persistence and guts. I give him a lot of credit for that. Graduated, got a job with Ford Company. He was pretty successful there.

GALLINA: Harry recognized his father as being a rigid-type person, a person who was rigid and biased in what he expected for himself and for Harry. Harry intellectually and emotionally at times disagreed with his father, but again, always complied with what his father desired for him.

MOYERS: The year before he went away to college, Harry made some new friends. He met the Hennessey family, who live here in the neighboring suburb of Park Ridge. Through Mr. and Mrs. Hennessey, their daughter Patty and her friends, Harry found a measure of acceptance.

PATTY HENNESSEY: He was treated as one of the group. We treated everybody the same. But I know at school he was treated bad, that everybody used to mock him out all the time. So that's why he probably found friends in another town because he lived in Montvale, we live in Park Ridge. And he came over here, and then more or less he hung around with us all the time.

Mrs. CATHY HENNESSEY: The girls started going out with him, I think mainly because he was one of the first boys that were in this group that had a car. And he would pick the girls up, pick their boyfriends up; they would go on picnics, and he would even take my little three-year-old for walks up the street in the carriage. I liked him very, very much.

Mr. TOM HENNESSEY: Very polite.

Pleasant kid; quiet. Not over-exuberant, but polite.

Mrs. HENNESSEY: The only way that I knew that there was a problem in the De La Roche family was through my daughters.

PATTY HENNESSEY: He said his father always used to yell at him, they used to get in a fight; so he would just get up, get in his car, and leave. And he would come over here. He couldn't stand his father. That was the only person in his family that he didn't like.

Mrs. HENNESSEY: He said that "My father said it will make a man out of me if I go to The Citadel.' And I told him, I said, "Harry, look, I can talk to you like you were one of my own. Going to any college, regardless of what college you go to, is not going to make a man out of you. If you're a man now, you'll remain the way you are. But he said, "My father wants me to go to The Citadel, and that's all there is to it."

MOYERS: Before he left, Harry talked to Norman Vick, who had quit The Citadel after one year.

VICK: He came to find out about the school: is it a good school, what does he need to survive there, what is it like? And I told him quite specifically that particularly in the beginning it's very hard, and there's constant pressure. It's a constant win-lose situation. And I told him it is very difficult. I told him a lot of ways that he could get around it to make things easier, such as being in a sport. He expressed a desire to be on the rifle team, which I don't believe he made if he tried out for it. Basically, he did not really believe me. He had it was almost as though he was trying to convince me that he was an outstanding person and there was nothing the school could throw at him that he could not handle. And that's the attitude that he left with.

MOYERS (over scenes of cadets and band marching on Citadel grounds): There are, in a sense, two Citadels. This is the one parents, sweethearts and the public see. Located in Charleston, South Carolina, it is steeped in Southern tradition.

Col. D.D. NICHOLSON: The first year is designed to be a difficult year. It subjects a young man to military training, he is under con- siderable pressure from the upperclassmen to excel, and we feel that it is more difficult physically and psychologically than West Point or Annapolis or the Air Force Academy. And we have practically a zealous dedication, almost to the religious fervor point of view, to this system.

MOYERS: Colonel D.D. Nicholson, Jr. is The Citadel's Vice President for Development.

NICHOLSON: There is an aspect of the knob system that in effect takes a segment of the individual's personality and takes it down to ground zero. In other words, his decision-making process, the way he looks at allocation of work, the manner in which he decides what he does first, is put aside, the way he did it in the past. But after he's at ground zero, which would take place early in his knob year, he would flower into this great thing we call the Citadel man, and later in his life he would say that that flowering is what made him succeed because he now knows how to budget his time, he can organize himself better than his fellows and he can achieve more.

MOYERS: So there is also that second Citadel, just as real as the first. And it is seen only by a freshman cadet, or knob. It is a Citadel in which a freshman must ask an upperclassman's permission to pass him on the stairs.

FIRST KNOB ON STAIRS: Sir, Mr. Tacker, Sir, Cadet Private Warren, J. Edward, requests permission to drive down your stairs, Sir!

UPPERCLASSMAN: Right!

SECOND KNOB ON STAIRS: Sir, Mr. Tacker, Sir, Cadet Private Wilkers, S.B., requests permission to go by you down the stairs, Sir!

MOYERS: This is the Citadel that Harry De La Roche, Jr. entered in the fall of 1976. Cadet William Meidenbauer was in his class.

Cadet WILLIAM MEIDENBAUER: Well, when we first arrive here at campus the cadets are...are sort of broken down, they all get the same haircuts, wear the same uniforms and they march everywhere, and they sort of lose their identity. And this is all part of the freshman system.

MOYERS: Cadet Frank McKenzie was a class ahead of Harry.

Cadet FRANK MCKENZIE: During the first couple of days of training cadre, Harry stood out as a troublemaker. He accused one of the squad sergeants of lying about him, and I remember, it was at evening mess, he came and he accused the squad sergeant of lying about exactly what escapes me, but early on in the training process he began to stand out. He was definitely someone who didn't adjust, who perhaps wanted to be noticed, and we began to take notice of him.

MEIDENBAUER : Harry was one of maybe four or five cadets that always seemed to get the worst of it. And when he was here he really didn't fit in with the other forty freshmen in November Company.

MCKENZIE: I thought he was one of the worst cadets in his class. At inspections, there's usually inspection five days a week for freshmen during the training cadre, and he'd be looked at, and perhaps he'd pick up some demerits there. (Cadets doing pushups and running in place): And in the company there are also provisions for unofficial means of punishment which would include being what we call racked, which is doing pushups for a cadet NCO or a cadet officer. You go into the down position in the pushup, and you'll recite something like, "Sir, in the future I will endeavor to have shined brass at formation. When you finish the statement you'll come up, and that will be one pushup. The other forms, for example running in place, serve the same purpose, although naturally you don't recite anything.

MEIDENBAUER: It is pretty humiliating; you're out there running in place or doing pushups while maybe half the cadets or most of the other cadets are just going about their business. And they know you're being punished; it's...sort of a loud process, you can hear it all over the barracks. And it is sort of humiliating; the upperclassmen yell at you and call you names sometimes, and blame all sorts of stuff on you which sometimes isn't even your fault.

MCKENZIE The things a freshman has to do that are different from the upper three classes, at all times in the barracks he has to have his chin in, and this is called a position of a brace. The chin is tucked in until there are wrinkles, the arms are clamped to the side, the eyes are directly in front. You don't look around, you do not speak outside of your room in the barracks. The shoes have to be what we call spit-shined - brilliantly shined at all times; the brass has to be perfectly shined and pitless. On the campus, he's forced to walk in the gutters.

MEIDENBAUER: The first day you're here one of the first things you

learn is that you've got three answers that you can respond to. got "Sir, yes, Sir," "Sir, no, Sir," and "Sir, no excuse, Sir. an upperclassman asks you for an explanation, you give an explanation, but you just don't blurt out an explanation. Or a question.

MCKENZIE: At mess the freshmen serve the uperclassmen and themselves. They sit on the first three inches of their chairs, and one after the other they're asked questions. The cadet has to have certain items of knowledge for every meal. And if the mess carver wants to know something about sports, he'd have to come with an interesting fact about a sports team.

UPPERCLASSMAN: What's the mess fact of the day?

KNOB: Sir, who won the MVP for the Yanks this year, Sir!

UPPERCLASSMAN : Won the what?

KNOB : Sir, who won MVP for the Yankees this year, Sir!

UPPERCLASSMAN: MVP?

KNOB : Sir, yes, Sir!

SEVERAL VOICES: Bucky Dent! Bucky Dent!

MCKENZIE : Cadet De La Roche seemed to dislike me perhaps as much as any other corporal, and perhaps a little more. I was a pretty hard cororal during his period. He did a lot of pushups for me, and he did a lot of running for me. And I found a lot of faults with him. And it seemed to me that he was just not trying, and therefore I began to rack him, and he began to slide downhill even further. So it was just a vicious circle there. And I was trapped into my role, which is trying to extract results from him, and if he won't perform then I have to punish him.

MOYERS: Cadet Kevin Andrews was a class ahead of Harry.

Cadet KEVIN ANDREWS: I remember him as being basically a mess. I mean, he wasn't on a par with his classmates. He didn't have his shoes shined he always seemed to be doing something wrong, and you always heard his name. And right before Thanksgiving he told everybody that his mother had cancer and she was at home dying in the hospital, he had to go home, he probably wouldn't be back next semester 'cause he'd have to work and pay the hospital bills.

MEIDENBAUER: He left a couple of days early because of the thing about his mother.

MCKENZIE: And I asked Cadet De La Roche whether or not he'd be coming back. And he said no, he was not going to come back after Thanksgiving.

PATTY HENNESSEY: When Harry came home for Thanksgiving, it was like routine again. We all went out like when he left. It was the same thing.

Mrs. HENNESSEY: I had a long conversation with him about going back to school, and he was sitting in the kitchen and I was having a cup of coffee; I was getting the babies ready for bed, and he just happened to mention that he didn't want to go back to The Citadel. And I told him, you know, go back until Christmastime, give yourself a chance. Go back until Christmastime. And then if you really want to quit, be prepared for what your father is going to be saying to you.

CICCARELLO: Harry was never interested in being a military man, military soldier or a cadet. He didn't care for it one bit. And he made no bones about it; there were arguments about that that I heard and I was present at. And he said they treated him as though he was a piece of garbage, they mistreated him, they often beat him up. He had to do certain drills that he didn't care for. Schooling wasn't what he expected. And he was miserable, he was downright miserable. And his father said, "You've got to go through with it." He said, "This is for you. This is your life.

Mrs. HENNESSEY: At that time I recall telling Harry that being that he is eighteen years of age, he can always pick himself up and walk out of the house. He's of legal age, and if he continues to have these fights with his father.... I advised him personally to leave the house.

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MOYERS: But Harry didn't leave home. And he didn't go back school.

GALLINA: Harry's problem was a very real interplay between his own feelings and his own way of handling his life and that of his family and his father particularly. In his own way he was devoted to his father. sidered himself and his father much like each other. He didn't intellectually always agree with the parameters of masculinity and of the kind of life that his father expected of him. He felt badly when he was not able to live up to these expectations. But emotionally he accepted the expectations of his father, in a very real sense. His father and his father's expectations were real and dear to him. He strove to accomplish the kind of life's role, to become the type of man that his father expected of him.

Harry De La Roche's -- and, in a way, this family's -- unending, which I believe in a sense was predetermined, came about for two reasons. One was Harry's inability to emotionally cope with life at The Citadel. But it in itself was not sufficient without the second factor, which was the De La Roche family's inability to cope with this stress, with the fact that Harry could not emotionally live up to the expectations that his father had for him. The combination of these two forces produced the kind of atmosphere in which Harry and the family were going to come into stressful conflict with each other. Neither could yield. Harry on his end could not adjust himself emotionally to be able to succeed at The Citadel. He knew that his family could not accept the stress of him not succeeding there; and neither could change. Harry could not change and adapt himself to The Citadel, and he knew that his father could not change. He knew that the expectation of him was rigid, that it was inflexible, that it could not bend, and Harry accepted that, in his own way; he lived by that. He knew that that was the way it was for him, he assumed that that was right. There was no way out of his dilemma. And finally the pressure of that containment within the family became so great that he literally broke. The only way out for him was destruction of the family. The only way out of his predicament or his dilemma was to destroy one side of the terrible box that he was contained in. And that side was indeed his family.

MOYERS; Harry De La Roche, Jr. has served one year of his sentence here at Rahway State Prison. He will be eligible for parole at the earliest fourteen years from now, in 1993. When he was brought here to begin serving his sentence, he was accompanied by Undersheriff John Stasse.

Undersheriff JOHN STASSE: tAnd his minister was there and he gave a little prayer at graveside site where his whole family and that was the only time I really saw any emotion emanate from Harry. His eyes filled up and he welled up, and at that point he did show that he was obviously sorry that the thing had happened.

En route to State's prison we drove him by family was buried.

Mr. ROTHSCHILD: Everybody in town knew that Harry, Jr. was different than the other children. In what way, everybody had a different opinion. But Harry, Jr. was definitely different.

Mrs. HENNESSEY: Parents sometimes do not want to accept the fact that there's anything wrong with their child.

FURMAN: You have to support your kids in anything they want to do, and you can't force them to do things or become things that you think they should be just because that's what you want.

CICCARELLO: I think that if Harry had gotten his own way and his father forsaked the idea of The Citadel, this never would have happened.