http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Mar/03212004/utah/149781.asp

Mom's life uneven prior to stillbirth

By Matt Canham
(c)2004, The Salt Lake Tribune

Her mother doesn't trust her not to skip bail.
Her boyfriend stopped visiting her more than two weeks ago.
And her adoptive grandfather stresses she's not a blood relative.
The story of how Melissa Ann Rowland wound up in the Salt Lake County Jail,
accused of murdering her unborn boy and abusing that baby's unborn twin with
cocaine and alcohol prior to delivery by Caesarian section, is tangled by
mental illness and drug abuse.
While the National Organization for Women wants to make her a pro-choice
poster child and prosecutors want to make an example out of her for displaying
"depraved indifference" toward her unborn twins, all her defense attorneys are
asking is that she be quiet.
But Rowland refuses to be mute.

"I don't feel like I committed a murder," she said. "I regret my son was
stillborn. I miss him. I love him."
Born July 14, 1975, to a mentally retarded 32-year-old woman, Rowland also
was a twin, though her brother died at age 7 from serious medical problems.
Rowland was placed in foster care after birth and adopted before she was 1 by
Eugene and Bonnie Hrosik of Pittsburgh, Pa., who had a fairly common suburban
lifestyle before divorcing.
Rowland, though, was committed to a Pennsylvania mental hospital when she
was 12, according to her Salt Lake defense attorney Michael Sikora. Weighing
almost 200 pounds, she was diagnosed with "oppositional defiant disorder," an
ongoing pattern of defiant behavior toward those in authority.
She has been hospitalized at least one other time, Sikora said, and she
claims to have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Sikora said he was seeking
those records late last week, but refused to disclose their contents to The
Salt Lake Tribune.
Rowland has given birth to six children, the first time to twins in the
early 1990s, when she was between the ages of 14 and 16. She ultimately gave
those babies up for adoption, says her estranged husband, in a pattern that
that began with her own birth and has reached a crescendo with the murder
charges in Salt Lake County.
After graduating from Pittsburgh's Baldwin High School, she met Robert A.
Rowland Jr.
In early 1994, they were attending Job Corps in Charleston, W.V. -- she was
looking for a job in business and he wanted to be an automotive mechanic. They
married within the year.
In 1995, they had a daughter. Virginia social workers took her away when
she was just 7 months old. Robert Rowland declined to say why. Melissa Rowland
was charged Dec. 6, 1995, with threatening by phone, a misdemeanor "for cussing
out a doctor" who conducted a psychological evaluation, Robert Rowland said.
The Norfolk Va. Circuit Court found her guilty and sentenced her to one year of
probation.
The couple's first child, now 9, is living with Robert's parents in
Norfolk.
They had their second daughter in 1997 -- the same year Melissa was
indicted for grand larceny and disorderly conduct in Norfolk. After pleading
guilty, a three-year prison sentence was suspended.
Melissa and Robert split that same year, though they are still married and
have a cordial relationship.
"Everything just went downhill, so we separated," said Robert Rowland, who
lives in Norfolk.
Back home in Pennsylvania, Melissa Rowland pleaded guilty in 2000 to simple
assault, recklessly endangering another person and endangering the welfare of
children, according to Mike Manko, a spokesman for the Allegheny County
District Attorney's Office.
Prosecutors told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that Rowland punched her
then 2-year-old daughter in the face after the girl started eating a candy bar
in a grocery store. Witnesses told authorities she screamed that she wouldn't
be able to buy cigarettes because she would have to pay for the candy bar.
Shoppers surrounded Rowland's car in the parking lot and stopped her from
leaving until police arrived, according to the newspaper. When one woman
reached inside the car to get the child, Rowland rolled up the window on her
hand.
Rowland, who was living in Homestead, Pa., at the time, was sentenced to
five years of probation, which a Utah prosecutor says she subsequently violated
by allegedly abusing heroin and cocaine.
After the grocery store episode, Pennsylvania authorities again stripped
her of her parental rights, Utah prosecutors say. The daughter she hit at the
grocery store, now 7, was adopted by another family.
Within a year, Rowland embarked on a road trip, first stopping in Florida,
where her adoptive father Eugene Hrosik now lives. There, she met a man named
Roger Brown and the two started traveling together.
"She would call me and she would be in Kentucky one day and Indianapolis
the next. Then she would come back and stay in Virginia for awhile," said
Robert Rowland, who is now engaged to another woman and has a newborn baby.
Melissa Rowland called her probation officer from the road for awhile, then
she just stopped calling. Rowland and Brown ended up in St. George because
"that is where they ran out of money. That is where they decided to stay,"
Robert Rowland said.
Rowland became pregnant with twins -- one boy and one girl -- almost a year
after stopping in St. George.
In November 2003, she moved to a West Jordan apartment complex with Brown
and lived off of Social Security disability benefits. After talking to a few
Utah adoption organizations, she contracted with a California facilitator, who
subsequently placed her unborn twins with adoptive parents.
But the twins were having problems.
On Jan. 2, 2004, Dr. Sean Esplin at LDS Hospital told Rowland that low
amniotic fluid and poor growth had placed them in grave danger, but she defied
the doctor's advice and left without undergoing an emergency Caesarean section.

She ignored the concerns of doctors, who told her the babies may die, on
four separate occasions, according to the West Valley City police department.
On Jan. 13, Rowland acquiesced to a C-section at West Valley's Pioneer
Valley Hospital. The boy was stillborn at birth and the twin girl, Hannah,
needed oxygen and antibiotics to survive. In the hospital, Hannah tested
positive for cocaine and alcohol, as did Rowland.
A medical examiner determined the stillborn boy would have survived if the
C-section had taken place just two days earlier.
Brown later told investigators that three weeks before delivery Rowland
smoked marijuana, which she claims was laced with cocaine, according to court
documents.
The day after giving birth, authorities booked Rowland into the Salt Lake
County Jail and on Jan. 16 prosecutors charged her with child endangerment, a
second-degree felony.
On March 4, Rowland was moved to the jail's mental health and medical unit,
which houses about 50 inmates.
Paul Cunningham, the chief deputy of the jail, said Rowland has not been a
troublemaker though "like many inmates, she follows most of our rules, but not
all of our rules."
She called Robert Rowland from jail and asked for help making bail, but he
refused, saying he would expect her to flee if she was released.
"She has run before," he said. "For something like this, she would probably
leave the state or the country."
From jail, Rowland also called Ann Lamphere, the director of Adopt An
Angel, claiming she was still pregnant.
Lamphere visited Rowland in jail. Because she is a big woman who was
wearing a jail smock, Lamphere couldn't tell if Rowland was pregnant or not.
"You have to trust people and you try to trust people," Lamphere said.
Melissa asked her to bail her out and put her up in an apartment, in exchange
for the nonexistent child. Lamphere ultimately declined.
Rowland also allegedly tried to scam a Sacramento couple seeking to adopt,
according to prosecutors.
The Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office charged Rowland with murder
on March 11 saying she showed "depraved indifference to human life."
In the days following the murder charge, Rowland talked to a number of news
organizations, including The Tribune, against her attorney's advice, and the
story quickly reached an international audience.
She said she never refused a C-section, claiming the two girls she had with
her estranged husband were born by C-section.
"There are rumors that I didn't want to be cut," she said. "I never
hesitated."
She described Brown as "a very good friend," but said she had not seen him
in more than two weeks.
"His head's probably swimming, too" she said. West Valley City police and
Salt Lake County prosecutors say they don't know where Brown is but believe he
is homeless after being evicted from the West Jordan apartment in January.
Rowland also spoke with her father, who told her not to call or write.
Eugene Hrosik refuses to comment about his adoptive daughter's case,
because, he says, the public is trying to take advantage of a woman with mental
problems who made mistakes.
Other relatives are not as forgiving.
Her grandfather, Edward Hrosik, from Pittsburgh, Pa., said: "She had
everything the world could offer her. Now, we're done with her."
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill spokeswoman Kerri Terry said Rowland
should not be facing murder charges.
"People with a mental illness sometimes are not in the right state of mind
to make decisions," Terry said. "She's not rational. She doesn't need
punishment, she needs help."
Her estranged husband, Robert Rowland, disagrees. "She is able to make
decisions for herself," he says. "I think if she did it, she needs to pay for
it."
Prosecutors hold a similar opinion.
"All of the evidence would suggest that she made all of her decisions
knowingly and voluntarily," said Kent Morgan of the Salt Lake County District
Attorney's Office. "If she suffers from a mental illness that would exonerate
her conduct, those issues can only be decided after charges are filed if they
are not apparent before the charges are filed."
The District Attorney's Office has dropped the child endangerment charge,
saying they will use the information to bolster their murder case.
Melissa Rowland continues to be held on a $250,007 bond. Her next court
hearing is Monday.
"Roger and I wish things had turned out differently," she said.



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A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown