Susan Negersmith

Case background and investigation

Susan Negersmith, 20, from Carmel, New York, was in Wildwood, New Jersey, with friends over Memorial Day weekend in 1990. Early on May 27, 1990, her partially clothed body was found in an outdoor storage area behind Schellenger's, a seafood restaurant about two blocks from the boardwalk, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer and NBC10.

The first official finding was that her death was accidental, caused by alcohol intoxication and exposure. Her family disputed that conclusion. According to the Inquirer, forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden later reviewed the case and concluded that she had been raped and smothered; the state reversed the original autopsy finding in July 1993, and the county changed her death certificate to homicide in 1995. In 2015 the Cape May County Prosecutor's Office still listed the case as an active homicide investigation.

A DNA profile had been developed from evidence on her body. According to the Cape May County Prosecutor's Office, as reported by 6abc and NBC10, investigators used genetic genealogy analysis beginning in 2018 and identified Jerry Rosado, of Millville, New Jersey, as a possible match; a later DNA comparison was reported in 2021. On April 8, 2022, Rosado, then 62, was arrested and charged with second-degree sexual assault. Prosecutors stressed that he had not been charged in connection with her death.

Rosado's lawyers argued that the prosecution was barred by the five-year statute of limitations that applied to sexual assault in 1990. The trial court disagreed, but the Appellate Division reversed, finding that the limitation period had run out on May 27, 1995, according to Patch. On December 13, 2023, the New Jersey Supreme Court agreed, holding that later changes to the law removing the time limit could not revive a prosecution that had already expired. The charge could not proceed, and Rosado was never tried or convicted of any offense related to Susan Negersmith.

No one has been charged with causing her death, and the homicide remains unsolved. Her father, Kent Negersmith, and her sister, Emily, have spoken publicly over the years about the family's efforts to have her death recognized as a homicide and to see the case resolved, the Inquirer reported.