in the head. beverly told authorities her boyfriend had committed suicide. i was standing by the couch, and i just hit the floor. i don t know if i fainted or what. i just sank down to the floor. beverly called the police and told them he committed suicide and then telephoned her daughter katie, who she says was devastated but not surprised. it seemed within keeping absolutely. to roger s character that he might kill himself? absolutely. somebody whose mood swung. somebody who s so complicated. he was seeking something to be loved and admired, and he had absolutely no idea how to get it. katie was especially concerned how roger s death would affect her mother because beverly s father had also committed suicide. she lived with it all of these years, and i remember thinking, oh, god, not again. beverly says she was in a state of shock.
culminate in marriage? no, no, not in the beginning, not later. roger was difficult sometimes, but, you know, i could always tell him to go home. you liked having a certain degree of autonomy? oh, absolutely. but by 1991, as roger approached 60, his mood suddenly darkened. now retired, he began to think about his legacy. though roger had adult daughters, he became obsessed with the idea of having a son. he wanted somebody, a child, to look up to him. roger and i had conversations, repeated we always had these discussions not necessarily in the realm of reality, frankly. you make it sound almost as if this was a fantasy child? knowing roger, i think that was a fair assessment. roger thought he could live his dream of family legacy by producing a son, and it would be as simple as that. and beverly said roger had other worries, like his thwarted social ambitions.
from roger s estate the night he died. although prosecutors turned over this evidence to the defense, they didn t reveal the witness who d seen the vehicle. steve northup says this was a crucial admission because that witness might have led them to the driver. if the death was a suicide, a visit from that person or those persons could have been a factor in whatever decision he made that night. and that wasn t all the prosecutors hadn t shared. there was a statement from roger s former secretary that might have supported the defense s suicide theory. there were statements by other people close to roger that roger had been depressed or experiencing problems, had been unhappy. and there was another statement also not turned over from roger s daughter. she told police that her father s lover krystyna had been afraid to confirm the sex of the baby she was carrying because she knew how desperately roger wanted a boy. northup says that, if indeed the
the thing that tortures you the most is that you should have been there. you could you blame yourself. you should have done something. was there any doubt in your mind that roger had committed suicide? no. i mean, i didn t have any reason to think anything else. arthur hodges, then a local newspaper reporter, started looking into roger de la burde s life and his death. he had been regarded as someone who was full of life, had a ton of projects going on. real estate deals, art deals, working on a book about his collection. so in many ways, the last person on earth to commit suicide? right. a lot of people, right after the obituary ran in the paper, said, no way. i don t buy it. he did not kill himself. and though police were treating roger s death as a suicide, they had questions for beverly monroe. they called me to come out to the farm that morning, all just normal and casual. we sat in the kitchen, and he said call me dave. dave was detective david
he didn t want a baby. he didn t want a child. he wanted that love and that respect. that s why i think that, when roger learned that she really was pregnant, that that reality hit him. besides beverly s attorneys argued, even if roger had been murdered, there were a host of others more likely to kill him than his understanding girlfriend. they described the real roger burde as a ruthless, immoral provocateur. who thrived on turmoil and lies, and delighted in bizarre practices, including his worship of an obscure nigerian deity, eshu, the god of chaos. they portrayed this would be country squire as a low class lothario and an all too tempting target. there s a whole list of enemies, and any one of them could have pulled the trigger. could roger s art dealings made him vulnerable to some unknown killer? it turns out the value of some of his supposedly priceless