Fox Chapel’s Adam Rosenberg pleads not guilty to killing Christian Moore-Rouse in preliminary hearing
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A Fox Chapel man accused of killing a Verona man will stand trial after pleading not guilty in a preliminary hearing Friday at Pittsburgh Municipal Court.
Adam Rosenberg, 22, was charged in May with criminal homicide, robbery, abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence in connection to the killing of Christian Moore-Rouse.
Magisterial district Judge Craig Stephens held all charges and set the case’s next date for Dec. 23 in Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas.
Alexander Cashman of the Allegheny County District Attorney’s office called four witnesses Friday to testify at the preliminary hearing. Cashman is representing the Moore-Rouse family.
Allegheny County homicide detectives have said Moore-Rouse was last seen publicly Dec. 21, while at work at the Dollar Tree in the Penn Hills Shopping Center. At the hearing on Friday, an Uber driver testified he picked up a “light-skinned Black” man in Verona that evening. He said he drove him to Settlers Ridge Road in Fox Chapel.
Police said Moore-Rouse lived on Spruce Street in Verona. Rosenberg lived with his parents in a house located on Settlers Ridge Road in Fox Chapel.
Moore-Rouse’s body was found more than two months later. He was half-dressed in the same outfit he was wearing the day he went to Rosenberg’s home.
Police have said Rosenberg lured Moore-Rouse to his parents’ house in Fox Chapel under the pretense of playing video games and smoking marijuana. When he arrived via Uber, Moore-Rouse was greeted by Rosenberg. Authorities charge Rosenberg shot Moore-Rouse in the back of the head shortly after and dragged his body to a wooded ditch near the Settlers Ridge property. His body lay there undiscovered until March 3.
Rosenberg and Moore-Rouse were acquaintances, but the extent of their relationship is unclear.
Rosenberg was held at Torrance State Hospital in Derry for mental health treatment and evaluation. A temporary transfer from Allegheny County Jail happened after he was deemed “legally incompetent” in July.
The determination meant Rosenberg was not able to assist in his own defense, said Casey White, one of three attorneys defending Rosenberg.
White said Rosenberg stayed at Torrance for about three months and has since been deemed competent. He is now being held at Allegheny County Jail, and he joined Friday’s hearing over a video-conference call. White declined to say what diagnoses Rosenberg has received.
After the hearing Friday, White said Rosenberg is “clearly mentally ill.” Wendy Williams, another attorney defending Rosenberg, said a plea deal is not off the table, especially considering their client’s mental issues. She said pleas of not guilty by reason of insanity or guilty but mentally ill are both possibilities.
Williams said the prosecution’s case is “very circumstantial.”
She referenced the unreliability of the testimony given by Jadian Jackson, a friend of Rosenberg’s. Jackson said Rosenberg, a friend from high school, told him about killing a person named “Chris” by shooting him in the back of the head. But Jackson said he didn’t believe Rosenberg.
The Uber driver who testified said there was nothing out of the ordinary about the rider, and that they did not interact during the drive because the man was on his phone the entire time.
When he dropped the man off on Settlers Ridge Road in Fox Chapel, he said he saw another man in the driveway. As he pulled away, the Uber driver said he did not hear a gunshot or anything else that could have startled him.
“So there were a lot of inferences made,” Williams said, addressing Judge Stephens.
One of those so-called inferences was derived from county detective Dale Canofari’s testimony that investigators found supposed lyrics to a rap song in Rosenberg’s cellphone.
The lyrics, Canofari said, reference “somebody being killed in the woods.”
Canofari read part of the lyrics: “Left him using on the driveway, than stepped to him two feet and drag ‘em with it (sic) the wool.”
Williams said the prosecutors failed to authenticate what detectives found in Rosenberg’s phone, including the lyrics to the song and other text messages presented.
“Who wrote them?” she said.
Rosenberg also faces charges related to the killing of Jeremy Dentel, 28, of Baldwin. Police have said the two met on a dating app. On their first meeting Feb. 16, police said, Rosenberg entered Dentel’s home in Baldwin, shot him in the head and left. The encounter lasted less than a minute, police said.
A status hearing for that case is scheduled to take place in January.
Moore-Rouse’s mother, Lee Rouse, and friends of the family were in attendance at Friday’s hearing. She was not immediately available to comment. A family friend declined to comment.