A 42-year-old Cabot woman was sentenced to 46 years in prison Monday for the September 2012 baseball-bat beating death of a man whose body was found buried behind the woman's home.
Prosecutors said Joyce Rene Rollf had 46-year-old James Clifton "DJ" Heath killed because she feared he had disclosed to her parents that she was dealing drugs.
Rollf will have to serve 25 years before she can qualify for parole under the sentence imposed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Herb Wright, who found the twice-divorced mother of two guilty of first-degree murder, corpse abuse and tampering with evidence in June.
Heath's sister, Angel Hardin, and mother, Delila Ann Harrell, told the judge that the man's death has devastated his 16-year-old son and that because his remains were not found for weeks, the family was denied a burial service in the family plot.
"He was in the ground so long we had to have him cremated," Hardin said before turning toward Rollf. "When you picked up that bat, did you think what it would do to his family ... to your family? I hope he haunts you every day."
Rollf killed her "baby boy" and two years later still does not seem to care, said Harrell, in tears.
"I came to your home and asked where my son was and you lied to my face," Harrell said, calling Rollf "evil." "Nobody deserves to die the way he did. Look at you, just sitting there. You have no remorse. You're just sorry you got caught."
Rollf's mother, Dolores Beasley, told the judge Rollf has been a good daughter; a hard-working employee; and a loving mother, successfully raising two children to adulthood.
Rollf has a "big heart," taking in people in need of help, Beasley testified, saying that her daughter had overcome a drug habit to stay clean, only to have her drug problems reignite when she got involved with her boyfriend, 26-year-old William Robert Null of Jacksonville, who has pleaded guilty to evidence tampering and corpse abuse in the case. He is serving a 12-year sentence.
Beasley also said her daughter knows what it means to lose a close relative because Rollf's husband was shot to death several years ago. Beasley told the judge she was proud of her daughter when Rollf met with the man who shot her husband and forgave him.
She also told the judge she did not believe her daughter killed Heath.
"In my heart, I don't think Rene took Mr. Heath's last breath. I think she was involved," Beasley said.
Rollf did not testify at her trial or Monday's sentencing hearing. She told sheriff's investigators that she participated in the beating but did not remember why Heath was attacked because she was high on drugs.
But the testimony by two of her co-defendants was that Rollf set up Heath for an ambush, was the first one to attack him, then had his body buried on her family's property and his clothes burned. Heath's remains, and what had happened to him, weren't discovered until about six weeks after he was killed.
Deputy prosecutor Barbara Mariani asked the judge for at least a 30-year prison term, the penalty recommended by sentencing guidelines.
But she asked that the judge consider a harsher penalty, given the "extreme cruelty" and violent nature of Heath's death, how Rollf arranged it, and the ensuing coverup.
Rollf initially lied to investigators about knowing what happened to Heath, Mariani said, when she had not only arranged his murder but had his clothes burned and his body wrapped in bedding, then covered in trash and dirt in a hole about 130 feet behind Rollf's mobile home on Centennial Road.
Mariani asked the judge to reject defense arguments that one of Rollf's co-defendants was responsible for killing him.
"The only person who had a motive to kill was her," Mariani said.
Defense attorney Patrick Benca disputed that Rollf was responsible for the killing, saying at most she might be an accomplice.
Benca told the judge that blood spatter inside Rollf's home and forensic evidence provided Monday by a defense expert showed that the fatal attack on Heath likely began with Rollf co-defendant Taylor Joe Arnold, 22, hitting Heath in the side of the head with a ball-peen hammer followed by Jodey Kay Posey, 34, stepping on his throat.
Arnold, in a plea agreement with prosecutors to secure his cooperation at trial, pleaded guilty to corpse abuse and evidence tampering in exchange for his case being prosecuted in drug court. At Rollf's trial, he denied participating in the beating, testifying that he only helped bury Heath and clean up the bloody aftermath because Rollf had threatened him.
Jodey Posey was never charged in the killing, although her estranged husband, 37-year-old John Phillip "Po" Posey, testified at Rollf's trial that the woman had stepped on his neck and said she had felt Heath take his last breath.
In exchange for his cooperation, John Posey was sentenced to 37 years in prison for second-degree murder, reduced from first-degree murder; evidence tampering; and corpse abuse.
The defense expert, El Paso County, Colo., coroner Dr. Robert Charles Bux, testified that state Medical Examiner Charles Kokes should not have been so quick to favor a baseball bat over a ball-peen hammer as the weapon used to inflict Heath's killing head wound. There's no way a forensic pathologist could say for sure what type of instrument -- bat or hammer -- inflicted that injury, Bux testified.
Bux also questioned Kokes' handling of the postmortem medical exam and told the judge that Kokes' autopsy report did not have sufficient documentation to support Kokes' findings on the cause of death.
Metro on 09/30/2014