SLAUGHTER SON
Kills mom, dad & 2 bros on Thanksgiving
Harry De La Roche, 18, was desperate to find a reason to drop out of military school. His solution was murder his family. On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Nov. 28, 1976, police pulled over a car that sped through a stop sign in Montvale, N.J. Patrolman Carl Olsen later recalled that the young driver screamed, “They’re dead. They’re all dead,” and roared off.
Olsen followed De La Roche to the red house where the teen grew up with his father, Harry, Sr., 44, mother Mary Jane, 50, and brothers, Ronald, 15, and Eric, 12.
Police immediately found the bodies of the parents, both shot twice in the head. Eric had been shot three times and bludgeoned. An autopsy later revealed that the blows, not bullets, was what killed him.
There was no sign of Ronald. De La Roche’s story was that at around 3 a.m., he came home after visiting a friend to find his parents dead and younger brother dying. Ronald was sitting on his bed, a pistol on a table by his side. The younger son said that he shot the rest of the family after a quarrel with Harry Sr. about pot smoking.
De La Roche told police that he ran in terror from the house.
The police put out an all-points bulletin looking for Ronald. But the boy was found 12 hours later — dead and stuffed into a metal locker in the attic. He had also been shot in the head.
De La Roche was arrested and charged with the holiday weekend bloodbath.
In some ways, the 6-foot-3 cadet at the Citadel Military College in Charleston, S.C., seemed an unlikely candidate to massacre his family. His father, an executive for the Ford Motor Company, gave his sons plenty of attention. Harry Sr., was a whirlwind — a member of the Montvale Athletic League’s softball team, a Little League manager for more than a decade, and a Boy Scout leader. He urged his boys to work hard and succeed.
Harry Jr. did not inherit his father’s enthusiasm or energy.
A premature baby, he never gained much strength or athletic ability. After the murders, friends, neighbors and relatives told The Bergen Record that Harry Jr. went along with various activities to please his father.
Over the years, Ronald and Eric excelled in football, baseball, bowling and were popular with other kids.
Their big brother was another story. High school friends said he was the kid everyone laughed at and picked on, a target for bullies and nasty pranks.
The more he tried to make friends, the more his peers humiliated him.
There was only one thing that he did well — shooting. His father taught all three boys how to handle a firearm and took them every week to a local pistol and rifle range tto practice.
After high school, Harry Sr. wanted his eldest son to go to a mmilitary school. After bbeing rejected from WWest Point and the AAir Force Academy, he landed at the Citadel, a place known for its grueling freshman yyear. He was hazed mmercilessly.
After two months, De La Roche told Citadel officials that he had to go home early for Thanksgiving because his mother had cancer, and that he was probably not coming back.
His mother did not have cancer, but school officials did not check out the story.
De La Roche told several versions of what happened on the morning of the killings. In one, a confession that went on for 64 pages, he said he shot his parents and brothers because he could not stand the idea of going back to the Citadel and didn’t have the guts to tell his father.
After a night out drinking and smoking pot, De La Roche entered his parents’ room and held the gun to his father’s head for 15 minutes. Eventually, he pulled the trigger four times, leaving both parents dead. After that, he shot Ronald.
His younger brother, Eric, leaped out of bed and started screaming, “No. No. No.” De La Roche shot him three times, but managed only to wound him. Eric kept trying to get up. In the confession, De La Roche said he put his hands over the boy’s eyes and said, “It’s all a dream. It’s all a dream.”
Then he delivered a death blow with the gun.
Before the start of his January 1978 trial, De La Roche recanted his confession, saying that police forced it out of him. But the judge allowed the confession to be read in court.
On the stand, De La Roche insisted he murdered only one person, his brother Ronald, in a moment of temporary insanity.
He said when he returned home after a night out with friends, he found his parents dead, and Ronald sitting on his bed.
“He was looking a little dopey or shocked,” he testified. “I said, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ And then I noticed Eric on the floor.”
De La Roche said he shot his youngest brother in a rage and stuffed the body into the locker in the attic.
His attorneys tried an insanity defense, but it did not work. After deliberating for six and a half hours, the jury found De La Roche guilty of first-degree murder, for which he received four concurrent life sentences.
Now 62, De La Roche has been turned down for parole six times. His most recent attempt failed in 2019, and he will be observing Thanksgiving behind bars until at least 2024.
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