New charges against Main Line murder figure

WEST CHESTER » The woman who claimed that she was mistaken about allegations she made of being assaulted by a former Tredyffrin man identified by authorities as a “person of interest” in the unsolved 2016 homicide of a Berwyn widow now says she was coached by him on what to say to try to get his felony charges withdrawn, according to the Chester County District Attorney’s Office.

In a motion to have the bail for defendant David Bookstaber either increased or revoked prior to his scheduled August trial on the assault charges, the prosecution contends that the woman, identified as Alicia Rosato, told officials involved with her case that Bookstaber had sent her a series of “scripts” that she could use to try to convince police and prosecutors her past mental health issues had “confused” her about the events the night of the alleged assault, and that she instead believed that her then-boyfriend was trying to help her, not harm her.

Rosato, of Montgomery County, later told a similar story to MediaNews Group. The D.A.’s Office contends in its bail motion that the interview she initiated and the article that followed from it was part of an attempt by Rosato to “increase the pressure on authorities” to have the charges against Bookstaber, her erstwhile boyfriend, dropped.

Bookstaber, who now lives in Idaho but who had reportedly been staying in the Philadelphia area recently to quarantine himself in preparation for his upcoming trial, was arrested on Thursday by Chester County Detective Robert Balchunis and charged with two counts each of hindering apprehension and destroying evidence and intimidation of victims and witnesses, both third-degree felonies.

He was arraigned on those charges late Thursday morning by Magisterial District Judge Thomas Tartaglio of East Goshen, who set bail at $75,000 unsecured. Assistant District Attorney Michelle Thurstlic O’Neill said in her motion following the arraignment that Bookstaber presented a flight risk, and asked Common Pleas Judge Patrick Carmody, who is presiding over the assault case, to increase his bail “substantially” on the new charges or revoke it altogether.

O’Neill also filed a similar motion in the assault case asking that Carmody revoke bail because of the new arrest on the witness tampering allegations.

A hearing on both motions is set for 10:30 a.m. Friday.

Bookstaber is the man who Tredyffrin police and Chester County Detectives have investigated as part of their probe into the 2016 beating death of 62-yearold Denise Barger, who lived alone in a house next door to Bookstaber’s former home after her husband’s death and who had complained to police about his behavior before her murder.

He has not been charged in that homicide, and the investigation into Barger’s death continues.

According to the motion, Bookstaber was arrested on Dec. 5, 2018, after he allegedly handcuffed Rosato, restrained her on a bed for about six hours, and held a pillow over her mouth causing her twice to pass out. Rosato had called Tredyffrin police to Bookstaber’s townhouse on West Golf Club Lane after Bookstaber allegedly released her from the restraints.

After his arrest, in the spring of 2019 Bookstaber and Rosato resumed their relationship, according to the bail motion. That fall, she began contacting authorities in Tredyffrin and the D.A’s Office, telling people she spoke with that she was mistaken in her original description of the events, and that Bookstaber had, in fact, not assaulted her. She also made allegations of misconduct by police in asking that the charges against Bookstaber be dropped.

According to the criminal complaint filed against Bookstaber in the new case, when Rosato spoke with Tredyffrin police in October 2019 about the alleged assault she appeared to be reading from a stack of papers. Those, she said this week, were part of the narrative that she and Bookstaber had developed to convince authorities to drop the case against him.

In the interview she later gave to a reporter, she maintained that her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms had made her imagine that Bookstaber, with whom she was living, had tried to harm her the night of the incident.

“I was very confused that night,” Rosato, claiming she was experiencing a “dissociative event” the night of the incident. “I didn’t understand what was happening. He was trying to stop me from hurting, not only myself, but him.”

“David was only trying his best to help me,” she said in the December 2019 interview that came on the oneyear anniversary of the incident. “I know he was not trying to harm me. David is the gentlest man I know.”

In a meeting with members of the D.A.’s Office, county detectives, and a Tredyffrin officer at the Chester County Justice Center on Monday, as the assault case was being prepped for trial, Rosato dropped the bombshell that Bookstaber had coached her through the interviews.

“Ms. Rosato explained that the aforementioned recanting statements were based on a ‘script’ that (Bookstaber) had shared with her via his (email) account. Ms. Rosato explained that Mr. Bookstaber would share these documents with her via Google Drive, and that they would collaboratively edit them,” according to O’Neill’s motion.

Rosato said that at the time she was contacting police, the prosecution, and the media, she was financially dependent on (Bookstaber) and that he “had made it clear that his continued support was conditioned on her continuing to ‘help her out.’”

She showed the prosecution a copy of one of the “scripts” Bookstaber shared with her, the motion states.

Rosato also gave authorities permission to inspect her computer, and an investigator with the Detectives Office was able to access additional “scripts” and emails in which he allegedly told her what to say “in order to get the case against him withdrawn,” the motion states.

Bookstaber, 54, now of Idaho Falls, Idaho, was deemed a “person of interest” in June 2016 after police investigators found a trail of blood leading out of a home on Heatherstone Drive in Berwyn, that seemed to end on Bookstaber’s property, and who later noticed injuries to one of his hands. The lifeless body of widow Denise Barger had been found in a second-floor bedroom by a family member. Police noted that Bookstaber was her next-door neighbor and had had previous confrontations with her over allegedly shooting guns on his property, which she felt had put her in danger.

Bookstaber was identified that way in court documents that surfaced after he attempted to get a concealed weapons permit from the Chester County Sheriff’s Office.