ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 15, 1997 TAG: 9701150063
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHATHAM
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM AND RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITERS
An 8-year-old Pittsylvania County boy was arrested on a charge of murder Tuesday in the December beating death of his stepfather, a Franklin County probation officer.
Pittsylvania County sheriff's deputies found Bernard Rosser Jr., 55, dead from a blow to the head in his Gretna home on the afternoon of Dec. 19 after he failed to show up for work in Rocky Mount.
Pittsylvania County Sheriff Harold Plaster said in a news release that a juvenile had been arrested, but he declined to give more information. David Grimes, Pittsylvania County's commonwealth's attorney, also declined to comment.
A source close to the case, however, said Rosser's stepson was the juvenile charged. A second source confirmed the 8-year-old had been charged. Because of the child's age, the newspaper is not naming the boy. His name is different from that of his stepfather.
The boy's mother, Frances Rosser, declined to comment as she left the county courthouse in Chatham Tuesday after a two-hour closed hearing in the case.
Just after the hearing ended at 5:30 p.m., a child could be heard screaming and crying in a hallway outside the courtroom.
Bernard Rosser's first cousin and close friend, Lester Wainwright, was stunned at the news.
"It's mind-boggling," he said after a reporter told him who had been charged. Wainwright called the boy ``a plumb good kid.''
Bernard Rosser had told his supervisor, Jeri Barnett, he might be late for work Dec. 19 because of bad weather, but he never called in that morning. He didn't respond to phone calls or calls to his pager, either, so Barnett asked the Pittsylvania Sheriff's Office to check on him.
Just after 1 p.m. that day, a Thursday, deputies found Rosser's body, Plaster said in the news release. They suspected foul play. A little over a week later, Plaster activated the West Piedmont Regional Homicide Task Force to look into the case. Their investigation led to the boy's arrest Tuesday.
Bernard Rosser, a Pittsylvania County native raised mostly in the Tidewater region, returned to his rural birthplace a few years ago to get away from the fast-paced life of the big city, Barnett said.
He earned a bachelor's degree from Virginia State University and later a master's in social work from Howard University. For nearly 20 years before moving to Virginia, he was a juvenile probation and parole officer in New York City and Houston.
"He loved the country," Wainwright recalled. "Bernard had some property, and he would go out there and fiddle around."
Rosser had been working as an intensive-supervision probation and parole officer for the state Department of Corrections in Rocky Mount for about two years, Barnett said.
He worked with high-risk offenders in Franklin County. He had a smaller caseload than regular probation officers, but his cases required much closer and more frequent supervision.
Barnett said Rosser's patience and organizational skills made him well suited to the job.
"He was quiet, more of a listener," she said. And he was well respected by the judiciary, law enforcement and the convicts he supervised.
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC: Map by staff. color. KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB