Attorney General Peter F. Neronha announced that David Roscoe (age 62), formerly of Westerly, pleaded nolo contendere today to one count of second-degree murder. Superior Court Justice Daniel A. Procaccini sentenced Roscoe to 40 years with 20 to serve at the ACI and the remainder suspended with probation for the 1990 murder of Germaine Mouchon.
Roscoe was originally tried and found guilty, after a six-day trial, in 2016 for the murder of Mouchon, but the conviction was overturned by the Rhode Island Supreme Court earlier this year.
Had the case again proceeded to trial, the State would have been prepared to prove that in the early morning hours of August 4, 1990, David Roscoe murdered Germaine Mouchon, who was 85 years old at the time, in her Echo Valley apartment in West Warwick.
Initially, investigators were unable to develop a suspect in the crime. DNA testing in 1990 was still in its early stages and limited by the absence of a substantial database of DNA with which testing could be conducted. Since 1990, DNA databases from convicted offenders have grown, allowing DNA from cases that at one point may have grown cold, to be tested against a much larger field.
In 2015, after an inquiry by Mouchon's grandson, Detective Sergeant Thomas Nye of the West Warwick Police Department had forensic evidence collected from the crime scene retested and was able to identify Roscoe, who had been previously convicted of child molestation and felony assault, as a suspect.
The West Warwick Police Department conducted the investigation and Assistant Attorney General Jay Sullivan and Special Assistant Attorney General Kaitlin Tracey prosecuted the case on behalf of the Office of the Attorney General.
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