Robin’s heartbreaking screams echoed throughout the house. The scene that she had before her eyes could not be more Dantesque: that of her own parents lying in bed, with their faces destroyed and in a large puddle of blood. Immediately, the teenager notified her little brother Billy, who was still sleeping, and the older Bruce, who lived in a cabin adjacent to the large mansion. Then, they called the emergency services.
Several patrol cars arrived quickly, but when the sheriff entered the bedroom he only thought one thing: “How much hate.” And the arrangement of the bodies did not seem to indicate theft, as the apparent evidence indicated. So much so that, for fifteen years, investigators kept the three brothers in their sights. Which of them could have been capable of committing such evil patricide?
Bruce and Darlene Rouse married in 1959 in Chicago after a brief romance. Up to that point, Bruce had built a promising future as a successful businessman with a large fleet of gas stations across the country, a ready-mix concrete business, shares in a cable television network, and several real estate investments. He was 21 years old.
Three children were born to the marriage – Kurt, Robin and William, whom everyone referred to as Billy, who was born in 1964 – and they settled in a luxurious 13-room, 2.5-hectare mansion in the suburb of Libertyville. However, the father’s business success was not reflected in the future of his children, who felt abandoned. However, it was the oldest and youngest Rouse who caused the most problems.
Kurt had to move to a cabin located inside the family property due to continuous fights with his parents. In fact, they even changed the locks to prohibit him from entering. For his part, Billy started to get into trouble because he just wanted to draw attention to his father’s continuous absences.
For example, he committed acts of vandalism and destroyed the school furniture, from which he was later expelled, set fire to his parents’ bed, had frequent outbursts of anger and became addicted to drug and alcohol consumption. And all this at just thirteen years old.
His drug addiction problem caused the Rouses to often confront the youngest of the house and try to straighten his attitude without any success. Bruce showered his children with luxuries and material things, when the only thing Billy asked, in his case, was to be a priority. That anger exploded in the early morning of June 6, 1980.
The day before the crimes, Bruce took Billy to work to help him install a spray paint booth for one of the gas stations. That evening, Bruce left Billy alone at home and went out drinking with some friends. Meanwhile, the teenager dedicated himself to drinking and consuming hashish.
So, when Darlene returned late from a bridge game and saw her son in that condition, she didn’t hesitate to confront him. The altercation was big: her mother threatened to send him to military school.
Billy stormed off to his room and continued drinking and using marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms. Until at two in the morning he decided that he was going to commit a crime: “I simply decided that I was going to get rid of my mother.” In the background, thunder rumbled against the walls: there was a strong storm.
Billy opened the closet where his father kept guns, pulled out a .16 caliber semi-automatic shotgun, and loaded it. He then entered his parents’ bedroom, where they were both sleeping, and committed the double patricide. He first shot his mother at point-blank range in the head, who died instantly. The detonation woke up his father, who sat up quickly.
Billy then pointed it at his face and pulled the trigger again, but he couldn’t kill him. So he started hitting him with the butt of the rifle. Since he was still alive, “I took a fucking knife and stabbed him until he stopped moving,” Billy himself explained to investigators years later.
Now, Billy did not intend to be framed for the murder of his parents, so he devised a plan to make it look like a robbery. After washing the blood off his arms and hair, the minor opened the drawers in his parents’ room and put some jewelry and valuable objects into one of his mother’s bags.
He then drove the car to the bridge over the Des Plaines River and got rid of all the evidence: the jewelry, the bloody clothes and the weapons – knife and shotgun – used in the crimes.
The next morning, around eight-thirty, Robin entered her parents’ room, surprised that they had not already gotten up, and came across the horrible scene. The teenager screamed in horror and ran to tell her brothers. Minutes later, emergency services came to her aid.
From the beginning, investigators suspected the Rouse brothers: how was it possible that neither of them had heard the shots? Could the roar of the storm muffle the detonations?
According to Kurt, he came home late after going out with his girlfriend and caught him sleeping. Robin, for her part, explained that she had been at a high school dance and that she didn’t return until after midnight. And finally, Billy claimed to have been with friends and also arrived home late.
But Tom Brown, the county sheriff, had no doubt: “With the brutal treatment the bodies had received, it must have been a hate crime.” Still, detectives were unable to obtain enough evidence to file charges against any of them.
Consequently, without clear evidence and with the legal umbrella provided to the Rouse brothers by the rest of the family members (they did not even testify before the judge), the only plausible hypothesis was that of a robbery resulting in two deaths. And, taking into account how the Rouse bedroom had turned out and the lack of jewelry, that was the only plausible theory.
Four months later, a bag of trash was found in the Des Plaines River and, inside, a jewelry box and a woman’s purse with a wallet and identification with the name Darlene Rouse on it. The authorities activated a new search protocol for new evidence: the weapons used were missing. But the investigations were fruitless.
After the murder of the Rouses, their children received a millionaire inheritance, of around two million dollars in assets and, later, $300,000 each for their parents’ life insurance policy. With this money in their pockets, the brothers separated and went to live with other relatives in different states.
Kurt moved to California and then to Iowa, while Robin went to study at the University of Racine (Wisconsin). But in 1983, the young woman lost her life in a traffic accident shortly after she informed the authorities that she suspected her brothers. Regarding Billy, she moved to Key West (Florida) and, although she tried to straighten out her life by buying a house, getting married and becoming a father, it didn’t take her long to get back on track.
Billy fell back into the world of drugs and got into trouble with the law: he stabbed a man during a chess game. The court sentenced him to spend 60 days in prison. When he left, he ended up squandering the inheritance on alcohol and drugs, his wife asked him for a divorce and he ended up living alone in an abandoned houseboat.
In September 1995, Billy and some of his fellow partygoers robbed a bank, although they were arrested shortly after after taking around $5,000. As soon as Florida police ran a background check on him, they notified his colleagues in Lake County in case they wanted to talk to him. 15 years had passed since the murder of his parents and it was never too late to repent and confess. They did it.
During the videotaped interrogation, Billy described the brutal patricide in detail. When investigators asked him if he regretted the death of his parents, the young man responded: “Yes and no.” He said that, although he was glad he didn’t have to deal with them anymore, he expressed regret because he “really screwed up my sister.”
In August 1996, Billy Rouse sat in court charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Initially, his defense attorney, David Brodsky, objected to the use of the videotaped confession, but Judge Victoria A. Rossetti ruled that the tape was admissible. Then, the lawyer tried to throw shit at the victims, claiming that they were abusive and abusive parents, as well as drug users. He even tried to point out Billy’s older brother as the sole perpetrator of the crimes.
However, the prosecution reinforced its argument in Billy’s recorded confession, where the young man described in detail the way he killed his parents, the state of how he left the bodies and the subsequent elimination of evidence. Only the real murderer could know that information.
On October 5, Judge Rosetti found Billy Rouse guilty of his parents’ crimes and sentenced him to two consecutive 40-year prison sentences. Although the judge made it clear that she felt “disgusted” with the law because it did not allow her to sentence the accused to life imprisonment. The reason: tougher penalties for juvenile offenders were not enacted until shortly after the murders, in 1980.
“You did the most hateful thing, the most shockingly evil thing, devoid of all mercy and compassion when you took that shotgun and, at point-blank range, shot your mother who brought you into this world… and then you shot your father. You not only took their lives, but you took it from yourself,” Rosetti said during the reading of the verdict.
Since then, the parricide has been imprisoned at the Pontiac Correctional Center (Illinois) awaiting parole. This will occur in the year 2035, when Billy turns 71 years old.