Mass. man imprisoned 34 years for murder speaks out after charges are finally dropped
By Mike Beaudet
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CHELSEA, Massachusetts (WCVB) — Thomas Rosa was sitting at home in Chelsea when the call came in: prosecutors would no longer pursue the murder case that had defined most of his adult life.
“I had no words. I just started crying,” Rosa said of learning the charges would be dropped.
The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday it would not retry Rosa, 64, for the 1985 killing of an 18-year-old nurse’s aide, Gwendolyn Taylor, in Dorchester. The filing ended a decadeslong legal battle. He was released from prison in 2020 after 34 years behind bars.
His case was marked by multiple trials, including a mistrial and an earlier conviction that was overturned before the final verdict that sent him to prison.
A judge vacated his conviction in 2023 after new DNA evidence emerged and concerns were raised about the reliability of eyewitness identifications used at trial. Despite that ruling, prosecutors had planned to retry Rosa, with a new trial scheduled for May.
In a court filing this week, however, the district attorney’s office said it was uncertain it could prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt, leading to the decision to drop the case. The office declined further comment.
The filing stops short of declaring Rosa innocent, a point emphasized by his attorney, Radha Natarajan of the New England Innocence Project.
“Even though the district attorney’s office does not want to admit that they prosecuted an innocent man … those are things that happened,” Natarajan said.
For Rosa and his family, the decision brought a mix of relief and disbelief after years of legal uncertainty.
“It’s surreal,” his wife Virginia Rosa said. “We’ve waited so long, and it’s finally happened.”
Rosa, who had been living under restrictions following his release, including a nightly curfew and limits on travel, now plans to visit family in Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico.
“I’m elated,” Rosa said. “It’s the day I’ve been waiting for.”
The New England Innocence Project said Rosa is the 100th person exonerated in Massachusetts since 1989.
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