Another look at mysterious death
Teresa
Time to take another look at mysterious death
By Roger Rapoport, Special to the News
Spend a night in the theater listening to the tragic stories of Ophelia or
Phaedra and you'll know audiences can't resist women on the verge of a
nervous breakdown. Perhaps that explains the irresistible appeal of Lissa
Roche, the deceased editor of Imprimis, America's most widely read speech
digest with a circulation of nearly a million.
The story of Lissa Roche's alleged 19-year love affair with her
father-in-law, George Roche III, the president of Michigan's Hillsdale
College, first surfaced in National Review magazine in November 1999. This
account, picked up by the wire services, hundreds of newspapers, Vanity Fair
and the broadcast media, also reported at face value the Hillsdale police
theory that this 41-year-old editor committed suicide on Oct. 17, 1999, just
two hours after making the sensational charges of her affair in front of her
husband, George Roche IV, a professor at the college; President Roche and
his new wife, Dean Hagan.
Dr. Roche, a Denver native and founder of the Shavano Institute, which was
based in Denver for a number of years, has denied the charges.
After spending a year studying the case and interviewing many of the
principals, I believe that the investigation of Lissa Roche's death needs to
be reopened as a possible homicide and that Dr. Roche may have been libeled.
Since no one has come forward with any evidence that Dr. Roche actually was
having a love affair with his daughter-in-law, it makes sense to ask his
first wife, June, and his current wife if they believe the tawdry story. I
have and they don't.
As for Lissa's death, consider that:
She allegedly unlocked a gun cabinet and gun case to load the weapon used in
the suicide. However, the keys that she was supposed to have used to unlock
and relock the case were never found.
There were no fingerprints on the gun case, the gun cabinet or the gun
itself.
Police never performed a ballistics test to make sure the gun found was the
instrument of her death.
Gunpowder residue samples taken from her hands were never actually analyzed
by the authorities.
To the astonishment of forensic pathologists who work these cases for the
state police, Lissa Roche was cremated promptly, preventing top experts from
taking a closer look at her remains.
Hillsdale police officials have suppressed part of her autopsy.
In their rush to judgment, the news media have missed an opportunity to
re-examine a story that was too good to be true. To begin with, as Dr.
Roche's employee, editor and daughter-in-law, Lissa Roche was not an
impartial witness to his behavior. She had been trying to break up his
September 1999 marriage to Hagan.
For example, in her widely reported confrontation with her father-in-law,
she also accused him of sleeping with Hillsdale coeds. This charge was not
repeated by her husband, George Roche IV, when he broke the sensational
charges about Lissa and Dr. Roche in his exclusive National Review
interview.
While college trustees called for Dr. Roche's resignation, they never
confirmed or denied these allegations. Nor did they give Dr. Roche an
opportunity to publicly respond to these charges, which ended his 28 years
at the helm of a conservative liberal arts college that has been lauded by
political leaders such as Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Colin Powell, Margaret
Thatcher and Jeane Kirkpatrick for its refusal to accept federal funding.
Keep in mind that Lissa Roche had also announced in September 1999 that she
was divorcing her husband because she believed he was having a secret love
affair with a Hillsdale woman. George Roche IV denied these charges,
although he did marry the woman in question, Akiko Tani, just seven months
after his wife's death. For Lissa Roche, who dreamed of moving to Buena
Vista with Dr. Roche, his youngest son, her son, George Roche V, and Dr.
Roche's mother, family was everything.
As for Dr. Roche, who has retired with his wife to Colorado, Lissa's story
is problematic at best. Absent any proof of an affair, it's time to consider
the possibility that Lissa Roche's allegations of a 19-year affair were a
self-serving attempt to put herself at the center of an extended family.
Until the police reopen the case and the college finally speaks up, it's
important to keep in mind that the story told by the National Review and
picked up by the media remains only a hypothesis. The truth may lie
elsewhere else. Or as former U.S. Secretary of Education William Bennett put
it: "There's a dead woman here. No it's not over. Not until they tell us the
truth."
Roger Rapoport is the author of Hillsdale: Greek Tragedy in America's
Heartland (RDR Books).
January 22, 2001