The surrogate
It begins with a woman who yearns for a baby and another who is willing and able to give her one. You can imagine the motives of the prospective parents. But what about the woman willing to carry a baby, give birth and then walk away?
Friday Night Rewind It doesn't matter which team you cheer for. We've got video previews of every high school football program in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando County.
LARGO — Dennis George Roache came and went through the kitchen window.
That's because he boarded up the front door with 2-by-4s. He thought he was being poisoned and spied on, his children were being sexually abused and that others were trying to convert him to homosexuality.
Delusional, paranoid, schizophrenic, he imagined hearing voices and menaced those around him — even on paper.
He filed dozens of lawsuits, and even sued his stepmother.
Yet Roache, 40, also married, learned a trade, had jobs, paid bills, wrote love letters, got along with many and appeared intelligent. After all, he learned to file all those lawsuits on his own.
Those were the starkly different portraits of Roache painted by the defense and prosecution during his first-degree murder trial Tuesday.
The defense is trying to spare Roache from a life sentence for decapitating 18-year-old Gregory Shannon with a machete in 2002.
Roache, twice found incompetent to stand trial, was found competent earlier this year.
Which is why the unflattering portrait of Roache came from his own lawyers. The defense wants the jury to find Roache not guilty by reason of insanity.
They spent the past two days using family and friends to tell jurors how dangerously unstable Roache was years before his 2002 arrest.
How did police evict Roache from his boarded-up apartment?
"A small army," said ex-apartment manager Angela Waller.
But each time his own lawyers tore Roache down, prosecutors used those same witnesses to build him back up.
The state doesn't deny Roache is mentally ill, but used the defense's witnesses to show the jury examples of Roache acting rationally, normally. Thus, the state argued, Roache could have killed with premeditation.
The defense, in turn, has already admitted Roache killed Shannon — as has the defendant's father, Ellis Roache.
Jamal Thalji can be reached at (727) 893-8472 or thalji@sptimes.com.
[Last modified: Oct 02, 2008 03:42 PM]
Comments on this article
by Simpson
Oct 2, 2008 3:42 PM
These defense lawyers can easily determine Dennis' "state of mind" by giving him a machate and exposing their law-schooled necks. If their client chops 'em we can say his state of mind is such that he'll kill a lawyer, but that doesn't make him bad.
by geezer responds
Oct 2, 2008 3:25 PM
They say Roache's paranoid then send a "small army" w/ a tank to evict him from his home after he went to all the trouble to board it up. I'm just agreeing with the fine, honest lawyers in this case. I'm just the messenger. Not making this up atoll.
by Vinny
Oct 2, 2008 2:33 PM
Geezer - clearly, you need YOUR head examined.
by geezer
Oct 1, 2008 4:52 PM
This beheading sounds like a one-time thing. Roache's shouldn't be a life sentence like his lawyer says. And what's wrong with boarding up your front door and climbing thru your bathroom window?. "She came in thru the bathroom window" is a song even.
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