Do you know who killed 17 year old Rosanne Robinson in 1990?
On a rainy New England evening on June 2, 1980, 17-year-old Roseanne Robinson was trying to get home. A Caucasian female described by her sisters as a "free spirit," she had recently graduated high school and moved to Providence, Rhode Island, just a week prior. That night, she was returning from a visit to her family in Massachusetts, where she had celebrated her sister's wedding anniversary. Hitchhiking was her usual way of getting around, and this stormy night was no different. She managed to get a few rides, eventually being picked up by three men along I-95 North. They chatted politely about the weather as they drove.
The men were not going her entire way, so they dropped her off under the Route 152 overpass in Attleboro, Massachusetts, to shelter her from the pouring rain. As they pulled away, they watched in their rearview mirror as another car, possibly a Pinto, immediately stopped and picked her up. This would be the last time anyone reported seeing Roseanne alive. The hope of a kind stranger offering a safe ride home vanished into the night, replaced by a mystery that would haunt her family for decades.
The following day, June 3, 1980, children playing in a brushy area on Albion Road, behind the Lincoln Mall in Lincoln, Rhode Island, made a horrifying discovery. They found Roseanne's body. She was completely naked and had been strangled to death. Investigators noted that her body was dry, despite the heavy rainfall the night before, suggesting she had been killed elsewhere and dumped there shortly before being found. An examination revealed that she had fought back against her attacker; DNA was recovered from underneath her fingernails.
Despite this piece of forensic evidence and numerous efforts by the Lincoln Police Department over the years, the DNA has never matched a suspect in any database. The men who gave her the last known safe ride were questioned, with one even undergoing hypnosis to recall details about the car she got into, but the trail went cold. No arrests have ever been made, and no specific suspects have been publicly identified in connection with her murder. The case remains an unsolved homicide, leaving her family with unanswered questions and the enduring pain of her loss.
