By Brian Fraga
bfraga@s-t.com
February 01, 2010 12:00 AM
NEW BEDFORD — Nearly a quarter century after his estranged wife's death, jury selection is scheduled to begin today in the murder trial of Robert J. Roy, charged with killing Marni Larkin Roy in 1986 and dumping her body in a submerged gravel pit.
According to prosecutors, Roy, 46, of Acushnet, who has been held without bail since his arrest in October 2007, was the last person to see Larkin Roy alive before she disappeared on March 4, 1986, while walking her dog in Acushnet.
Police scoured her neighborhood around Slocum Street with helicopters and search dogs. Investigators combed through trash bins and used X-ray machines to search for a burial site. Even psychics were brought in, but nothing turned up except her socks and sneakers, which were found in a culvert.
The search remained cold until April 1990, when recreational divers found her body in a water-filled gravel pit on State Road in Dartmouth known as The Ledge. Her remains had been tied and weighted down by a concrete block. Remnants of the clothes she wore the day she vanished were found.
For two decades, police suspected Robert Roy killed his wife because he was jealous that she was dating other men. He told investigators that he saw her the night before she disappeared, but said he did not kill her.
Police arrested Roy on Oct. 9, 2007, after two witnesses came forward and told investigators that the defendant told them in 1986 that he had killed his wife and dumped her in a place where she would never be found.
Roy pleaded not guilty to a single count of murder at his December 2007 arraignment in New Bedford Superior Court.
The trial at New Bedford Superior Court is expected to last at least three weeks, according to the Bristol County District Attorney's Office. First Assistant District Attorney William McCauley — who leads the district attorney's Cold Case Squad — is prosecuting the case.
Roy will be defended by attorney Jack M. Atwood, who declined to comment on Friday.
Roy's previous lawyer, Kevin J. Reddington, said during Roy's 2007 arraignment in district court that the charges were based on speculation instead of hard evidence. He said police had long been trying to link Roy to the murder and suggested the victim was associated with people involved in a drug ring and that she had been threatened with death by at least one other individual.
Born in New York City, Marni Larkin Roy lived most of her life in SouthCoast. She was employed by the Boat House Pub in New Bedford as a waitress at the time she disappeared. Relatives said she enjoyed sports, animals, dancing and choreography.
"My daughter was beautiful, feisty and outspoken," the victim's mother, Susan M. Medeiros, told The Standard-Times in 2007.
According to court records, Robert and Marni Larkin Roy married in December 1984, but separated the following fall after several instances of domestic violence.
After the couple separated, police said Roy was seen by neighbors peering into the windows of his in-laws' house.
The night before she vanished, a male friend visited Larkin Roy at home. While they were inside the house, the defendant allegedly slashed the man's tires and rearranged the wiring underneath the car's hood, court records said.
Approximately one month before she disappeared, the victim told friends that her husband said that if he could not have her, nobody would, and that he would kill her and himself, court records said.
Roy told police in 1986 that he and his wife had talked about reconciling and planned to move to Florida. However, none of her relatives were aware of such a plan, court records said.
In 2007, a witness came forward to tell police that Roy boasted the victim's body would never be found because it was submerged in a body of water.
Another witness said Roy described in lurid detail that he taped his wife's mouth shut "so she would listen to him" and that he threw her into a "bottomless pit," court records said.
An autopsy conducted in 1990 by a Smithsonian Institute forensic analyst indicated that Larkin Roy suffered a fractured skull.
Medeiros previously told The Standard-Times that the first four years after her daughter's disappearance were "a nightmare" because people sometimes called her house pretending to be her daughter.
Meanwhile, for several years after his wife's disappearance, Roy shuffled between Florida and Massachusetts, and assumed an alias of "Robert Portin," according to court documents.
In 1992, Roy was charged with sexually assaulting a Florida woman and convicted of rape, according to the Massachusetts Sex Offender Registry Board's Web site.
In 1997, Roy was sentenced to two years in jail after he pleaded guilty to assault and battery for a 1988 case in which he smashed a beer bottle across a woman's face in Fall River. The woman was trying to stop him from punching his former girlfriend in the head.
Roy was living in Acushnet and working at the Natco Corp. when state police investigators arrested him for the murder.
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