Photo: Richard Rosen
It was still early on July 8 when Richard Rosen headed to his mother’s apartment building in New Jersey, unaware of the violent scene he would soon discover.
Despite repeated calls, he had been unable to reach mom Elaine Rosen or his sister, 67-year-old Michelle Gordon, so he decided to check on them in person, hoping all was well. Perhaps, Richard thought, they had just stepped out to go shopping or grab a bite to eat.
He learned the truth as soon as he arrived about 10:25 a.m. to Elaine’s eighth-story apartment in the Vassar Square Condominiums, in Ventnor City: From the entrance, he could see the bodies of both his mother, 87, and his sister.
They had been fatally beaten with a night stick.
“I opened the door and had to turn away because of what I saw,” Richard, 50, tells PEOPLE.
Gordon, a patient-care technician, had moved in to help care for their mom, according to Richard.
Speaking to PEOPLE days afterward, Richard does not go into detail about the crime scene he found beyond noting that it was “very bad.”
And, he says, he was immediately certain he knew who was responsible: Gordon’s daughter, 41-year-old Heather Barbera, who had been living with the two women for around three weeks after she moved from Mississippi.
“No one else would do such a thing,” Richard says.
As to motive, Richard suspects it was financial.
“Maybe they had an argument over money and she went nuts,” he says.
The paper further reports that Barbera allegedly confessed to the killings.
She remains in the custody of N.Y.C. officials pending her extradition to New Jersey. A court hearing in her case is scheduled for Aug. 8 in Manhattan. An attorney for her could not be reached for comment.
Until she was caught, Richard says he lived in fear that Barbera might cross his path.
“I was afraid to go to my own house,” he says. “I don’t know what she is capable of.”
‘It Was Really Noisy and Crazy’
Richard says he had warned his mother and sister about letting Barbera stay with them — “I didn’t want her in the apartment, there have been other issues in the past” — but that he “never expected this.”
About a week before the slayings, however, Mike Miller, whose family owns an apartment in the same condo building, says he witnessed a heated altercation between Barbera and her mother in the valet area.
“[Barbera] was cursing out her mother in front of several tenants waiting for their cars,” he says. “She was really causing a scene.”
When Gordon went back inside the building, Barbera allegedly told Miller’s father, who was also present, that “everybody fights.”
“Look, we’re family. We fight,” Miller remembers her saying. “All families fight, but then we make up.”
source: people.com
