Jillian Tatro Rosado appears in a photo obtained by WNYT-TV.
A western Massachusetts man who allegedly threatened to kill his wife if she ever left him has now been charged with killing her. The two had been married for less than a year, and relatives say there were serious warning signs.
Luis Angel Rosado, 49, was arrested at 8:30 a.m. Thursday at a home on Fenn Street in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on a warrant that was issued Tuesday, according to Berkshire County District Attorney Andrea Harrington. Berkshire County spans the far western section of Massachusetts near Albany, N.Y. A Pittsfield Police Department activity log lists the address where the arrest took place as 458 Fenn Street; Rosado’s home address was listed as 562 Notch Road in rural Cheshire, Massachusetts.
Luis Rosado appears in a photo obtained by WNYT-TV.
The arrest came after Jillian (Tatro) Rosado, 38, who the authorities also listed under a Cheshire address, was found dead in a North Adams house on Sunday. A 911 call at 7:54 p.m. drew officers to a house at 46 Charles Street. The DA said an autopsy later concluded that the wife died of “multiple stab wounds.” Other documents reportedly suggest that the victim was also beaten.
1/3 Family is remembering Jillian Tatro. They say she loved the outdoors & rode horses. Police say her husband of 5 mos, Luis Rosado, stabbed her to death at a home they shared in North Adams Saturday. @WNYT pic.twitter.com/25E0FO9MSK
— Stella Porter (@stellaportertv) June 2, 2022
North Adams is small town nestled in the northern Berkshire mountains near the confluence of the borders of Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont. The wealth generated by nearby Williams College and MASS MoCA, a contemporary art museum established in a stereotypical New England brick industrial complex in downtown North Adams, clash significantly with the dilapidated homes and tenements once occupied by area mill and railroad workers. It is a town struggling to find its economic footing in the post-industrial economy typical of the region.
The Rosados had been together as a couple in those environs for six months and had been married for only five months, the DA confirmed.
The victim’s sister, Kelly Gancarz Siperoglu, told Albany, New York NBC affiliate WNYT outside court that she wants the public to remember her sister as Jillian Tatro, her name prior to marriage.
Siperoglu said the family “knew” Tatro Rosado was “being abused” and “feared for her life,” according to WNYT’s report.
One particular conversation with her sister haunts Siperoglu.
“She really thought I was kidding, and she just kept telling me all the time, ‘I got this, I got this,’ and I said, ‘No you really don’t got this, he’s got this, and you just don’t realize it,'” Siperoglu said while struggling to hold back tears.
The alleged murder likely happened the night before the victim’s body was found, according to witness accounts and cell phone records cited by the top prosecutor in the district.
“We do know that days before the murder, a witness did overhear Mr. Rosado tell his wife Jillian that he would kill her if she left him, and then on Saturday, May 28, we do have evidence that the parties were together in the evening prior to this murder,” the DA alleged. “And, communication from Ms. Rosado’s cell phone did stop during the time that the parties were together. Then, witnesses put the two arguing together that evening prior to Ms. Rosado’s murder.”
The name “Tatro” appeared on a mailbox outside the North Adams, Mass. apartment where Jillian (Tatro) Rosado was stabbed to death, allegedly by her husband. (Image via WNYT-TV screengrab.)
The Berkshire Eagle reported that Tatro Rosado was, indeed, “attempting to extract herself from the relationship when Rosado allegedly stabbed her to death in her second-floor apartment.”
The victim’s friends gave copies of Tatro Rosado’s final text messages to Eagle reporter Amanda Burke.
Those messages, per Burke’s report, expressed that the victim “had reached her breaking point in the relationship with Rosado and was ‘having him removed’ from her apartment.”
That text message reportedly came on May 27. Tatro Rosado was dead the next day.
Kristen McLain, the friend to whom the texts were sent, reportedly said she saw Tatro Rosado attempt to cover a black eye with makeup.
The DA said that both the victim and the defendant stayed at the Charles Street residence — an apartment in a two-story home on a narrow dead-end street on the west side of town — where Tatro Rosado was found dead, but she also said the couple also kept “other residences.”
The small city of North Adams, Mass., is nestled in the Berkshire Mountains. It is seen here at sunset from an overlook on Route 2 to the west. (Image via Aaron Keller/Law&Crime.)
The DA also said Luis Rosado was “successfully” prosecuted in the past for domestic violence involving another victim. According to a November 2020 press release by the Berkshire County District Attorney’s Office, the defendant pleaded guilty in late October 2020 to three counts of assault and battery on a household member and single counts each of strangulation, larceny from a person, and violation of a protection order. He was sentenced to serve one year in the Berkshire County House of Correction and then serve 18 months on probation. The DA’s office sought an 18-month term of incarceration; Judge Paul Smyth agreed with defense attorneys and issued a lesser jail term.
The 2020 press release also said the victim in the earlier incident refused to testify, but the DA pressed forward anyway using medical evidence and phone calls the defendant made from behind bars. Those calls, the press release said, proved that the defendant was “attempting to convince the victim not to participate in the proceedings.”
The DA said the defendant’s past history of strangulation was troubling and that her office would look into the “history” of the defendant and the murder victim.
That’s because, as the DA confirmed, the police arrested Tatro Rosado — the murder victim — for allegedly abusing her alleged killer earlier this year.
“Perpetrators of domestic violence can be very manipulative and very savvy about manipulating legal systems in order to carry on their abuse, and sometimes that does include seeking criminal charges against their victim,” the DA said. “That’s a topic, as I said, that we would need to be looking into the facts in the circumstances of those cases.”
The DA then pointed back to the defendant’s history when prodded for more information by the reporters who assembled around her at a press conference.
“Once an individual strangles their domestic partner or their intimate partner, that partner’s chance of being murdered goes up by 750%,” the DA said, citing statistics on abuse.
The DA also said she couldn’t comment on where Rosado might have been located between the time of the murder and the time he was arrested.
Court records reviewed by Law&Crime suggest that Rosado was also sued by a landlord in Pittsfield District Court in 2019. That litigation resulted in a judgment against Rosado for rent and possession of a premises. The court docket lists the total judgment as $2,483 against Rosado.
The DA didn’t say who called 911 to report that the victim was dead.
The defendant was arraigned in Central Berkshire District Court because no judge was sitting in North Adams on Thursday, the DA said.
WNYT reported that Rosado was being held without bail.
Siperoglu told WNYT that she wants to know precisely how her sister died.
“I want to know what he did to her,” Siperoglu said outside court. “I want to know if my sister cried, if my sister was yelling — who she was yelling for?”
“She’s my father’s baby, he has four kids, she’s the baby, and now she’s gone,” Siperoglu added.
The Rosados did not have children together, the DA indicated.
Friends and relatives remembered the victim as a lover of the outdoors and an avid horseback rider who loved her two kids and grandchild.
The Eagle reported, and the DA also indicated, that most of the court records in the case are currently sealed.
[Images of Luis Rosado and Jillian Tatro Rosado via Facebook]
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