A young woman is murdered. There are prints & DNA found at the scene. But, each lead runs into a dead end for investigators. When it seems like hope is lost, what is the clue that leads to the murderer’s arrest? In the case of Amanda Plasse, the devil was in a detail actually caught on camera.

Amanda Plasse was a 20 year old woman working as a local waitress that was found stabbed to death in her third floor apartment in Chicopee, Massachusetts. Her boyfriend, 26 year old Seth Green, found her body and called 911. Investigators arrived at a gruesome scene. There was no forced entry, indicating Amanda likely knew her attacker. Investigators also found several pieces of key evidence the killer left behind: a bloody shoe & palm print and DNA found underneath the victims fingernails.

The nature of the attack was so vicious that blood was everywhere in Amanda’s apartment. She had been stabbed many times and fought with her attacker. The stabs were hard, hitting bone, which led investigators to believe her murder was a “crime of passion”. So, the investigation focused on those close to Amanda. Green was an immediate suspect, but cleared because his shoe size & palm print did not match those found, in addition to passing a polygraph.

It seems like a shoe size, palm print & DNA are clues that would lead detectives straight to the murderer’s door. However, using these types of clues limits the search pool to assailants already in the crime database system. Amanda’s murderer was not in the system, and after a year of following dead leads the case was considered cold.

But, Amanda’s mother did not relent in her hunt for her daughter’s killer. She continued to hold events and circulated flyers to keep the search for Amanda’s killer on the minds of an entire community.  These reminders kept Amanda on investigator’s minds as well, and they decided to start the investigation from scratch – returning to old evidence in an effort to find something that was overlooked.

In the second look at the evidence investigators found a new, solid clue. In a photo of Amanda’s bedroom was a dry erase board with the words: “Dennis was here 8/11/11” written on it. The date was just over 2 weeks before the murder and detectives considered the note as a possible stamp left by the killer.

An immediate search started for any evidence of interaction between Amanda & someone named Dennis. Phone records, social media, and interviews with friends and family shockingly led to another dead end. In a last ditch effort, investigators searched for anyone named Dennis living within a certain proximity to Amanda’s home.

Jackpot! 2 people named Dennis lived close to Amanda, and after cross checking phone records a person of interest was identified.  Dennis Rosa-Roman lived three blocks away from Amanda & was brought in for questioning for Amanda’s murder. Confronted with the mounted evidence, even the picture of his own writing on her whiteboard, Dennis changed his story multiple times and refused to admit any involvement with her death.

Rosa-Roman was arrested and charged with Amanda’s murder in November 2013. He plead not guilty. In July 2016 a jury found him guilty of the murder and sentenced him to life without possibility of parole.