The Murder of Rose Marie Moniz (Massachusetts)

Sometimes a case can have evidence, a suspect, and a theory investigators believe explains what happened, yet a family is still left without the ending they waited decades to hear. grief and justice don't always move at the same pace grief looks for truth and meaning and someone to answer for what was taken the justice system looks for proof and proof has to survive questions, strategy, doubt, and 12 separate minds in a jury room. This is a case about a woman killed inside the place where she should have been safest, a family fractured by loss and suspicion, and what happens when an answer feels clear to the people who loved her, but the verdict says something else. I'm Kylie Lowe and this is the case of Rosemarie Munise, on Dark Down East. It was Friday morning March 23rd 2001, and a small tree decorated with pastel Easter eggs stood near 41-year-old Rosemarie Munise's mailbox on a cushioned avenue in New Bedford, Massachusetts. The eggs bobbed gently in the breeze outside the home, a quiet seasonal touch that was very rose, cheerful and warm, just like her. But the scene soon to be revealed inside the house stood in stark contrast to the light-hearted decorations outside. Around 10 a.m. Rose's father Alfred arrived to pick Rose up for coffee. Every day Alfred and Rose enjoyed coffee together, and he usually dropped off a pack of cigarettes for her too. She didn't like to leave the house much on her own, so family often came to her. When Alfred walked inside, absolutely everything looked wrong. Rose was a very clean and tidy person, but that morning her home was in disarray. Her purse was empty on the living room floor, items from the kitchen had been tossed all over the place. It looked like there had been a struggle, and then he found his daughter. Rose was on the bathroom floor, lifeless, and lying in a pool of blood. Alfred started screaming for Rose's son, his grandson 19-year-old Bobby, whose car was outside in the driveway. Fearing Bobby might be injured or worse, he climbed the stairs to Bobby's bedroom, finding him a sleep and safe with their dog, a big pit bull, the guard dog of the home. He shouted Bobby awake and called 911. By then, whatever had happened inside Rosemary Moniz's home was already over, but the questions were only beginning. Rose's brother, Gary Cunia, told me that Rose mostly kept to herself. She didn't get into trouble, she was quiet, reserved, and she liked being home, but quiet didn't mean cold. Rose had a soft way of showing people they mattered. Gary's daughter, Rose's niece, Joel Cunia, remembered her aunt Rose as one of a few aunts or uncles who really interacted with her when she was a child. Rose had what Joel described as an innocence about her, a kind of young-it-heart sweetness. One of the clearest moments for Joel is Rose sneaking candy to her and her sister. Rose loved making children feel special. Around holidays, she made baskets or bags of treats for all the kids, and Joel remembered them looking almost professionally done. Rose had this gentle way of reaching out. When a new neighbor moved in across the street, Rose left a note on the door to welcome them. She loved to bake and loved to make soup and loved taking care of people. She once cooked pots of soup for a customer at the donut shop where she worked after his wife passed away, and she helped care for her brother's wife when she was sick. Rose also loved decorating. Easter, St. Patrick's Day, Christmas, you name it. There was always something. The whimsical egg tree outside was part of her rotating collection that kept the exterior festive. Inside, her home was decorated in a beach theme with seashells, coastal touches, and paintings that reflected both Rose's style and her family's roots in New Bedford's fishing community. Gary told me they had a big Portuguese family and they loved to get together, whether it was a summer barbecue or a multi-generational vacation to New Hampshire with all the aunts and uncles, cousins, and grandparents together. Even though she kept to herself at home, Rose always attended family gatherings, and Gary saw Rose often for another reason. He's a carpenter, and Rose usually had something around the house that needed fixing. In fact, Gary was at Rose's house the day before she was killed. Rose wanted to build a room downstairs for Bobby, so Gary went by to look at the space and tell her what she would need. It was Gary's final memory of his sister before everything happened. Rose was remembered as kind and giving, someone who made people feel cared for in small, practical ways, that made the violence inside her home even more difficult to understand. Rose suffered significant head trauma. Her skull was fractured. She had deep lacerations bleeding from both ears, broken nasal bones, a broken left cheekbone, and multiple contusions from blunt force trauma across her body. Investigators also noticed unusual abrasions, contusions, and puncture wounds on her face. Those marks appeared to match two items from inside her own home, a fireplace poker, and the spines of a conch shell Rose kept on display as part of her beach-themed decor. In fact, John R.Element reports for the Boston Globe that a conch shell and a cast iron kettle were found next to Rose's body. Investigators later alleged that Rose had been beaten with three different weapons, a fireplace poker, a cast iron fireplace kettle, and that conch shell. There were signs that Rose may have thought back. Strands of her hair were found in the bathroom sink, and her earrings had been knocked loose from her ears and were lying on the floor. The rest of the house told its own story, too. Items had been knocked over and tossed around, and there was Rose's empty purse found on the living room floor. But what investigators didn't find was any sign of forced entry at Rose's house, which left open the possibility that whoever attacked her may have been someone she willingly let inside. Before she was violently attacked, Rose appears to have spent an ordinary evening at home. She did laundry in order to pizza for delivery, and at some point after that, police believed her killer got into the house. Early on, investigators heard allegations about one person Rose's family believed could have wanted to hurt her, an abusive ex-boyfriend. Rose's mother Frances Cunia told Jose Martinez and Dave Wedge of the Boston Herald that Rose had dated the man for about six months before leaving him because of the alleged abuse. According to Frances, he drank, yelled at Rose, and had once threatened to kill her. Frances said he told Rose, "It may take a week, it may take a month, it may take a year but mark my words, I will kill you." Frances also claimed the man threatened to kill Rose's son. This man was the only person that Frances could imagine wanting to harm her daughter. But the circumstances inside the house would eventually pull investigators a different direction, and suspicion fell a lot closer to home. Rose's son Bobby was the only person known to be inside the house when her body was discovered. His car was in the driveway that morning, and at first, his grandfather Alfred feared Bobby might be dead too. But Bobby was alive upstairs asleep in his bedroom when Alfred found Rose. According to the information later reported by Linda Roy for the standard times, Bobby usually worked late until around 11 pm. On the night before Rose was found, she called him to say she had ordered a pizza, but Bobby didn't come home right after work. Instead, he went out with friends and spent the night between Fall River and Providence, Rhode Island. Bobby said he didn't make it home until around 4.30 in the morning, and when he did, he snuck into the house through the back way, entering through the dining room because he knew his mother would be upset when she realized how lady was out. So Bobby had an alibi. Rose's time of death was believed to be about five hours before Bobby got home. According to Rose's niece, Joel, Bobby gave police a gas receipt from his way home that morning, which the family believes supported his account of when he returned to the house. Still, police questioned him multiple times over the years. For Joel, the suspicion of her older cousin and her aunt's murder was difficult, but not surprising. Neighbors had reported hearing Bobby fighting with his mother within the week before her murder. Bobby was also into partying at the time and using recreational drugs, according to Joel. She told me that he has since entered recovery and has been sober for years. That suspicion of Bobby became its own kind of burden. Not only had Bobby lost his mother in an unimaginably violent way, but because he had been asleep in the house when she was found, some people looked at him differently. The fact that he was there became, in the minds of some, a reason to wonder. Investigators reportedly sift through other people once close to Rose, too. According to Joel, her family understood that police had ruled out Rose. is most recent ex-boyfriend and Bobby's father, they just kept coming back to Bobby. According to Rose's family, detectives told them many times that they knew it was Bobby who killed Rose. They just couldn't prove it. These statements were reportedly made in the face of Bobby's alibi. Jewel told me she's also heard other concerns from family members about how the investigation was handled. She said there were cigarette butts around Rose's yard, and because Rose was so clean, the family didn't believe she would have left them there. According to Jewel, police didn't collect them at first, so her grandfather Alfred collected them himself after the house was released, and turned them over to investigators. Perhaps more concerning was what Rose's mother said she found while cleaning the bathroom. Jewel said it was what Francis believed to be a small, skull fragment. According to Jewel, Francis tried to turn it over to investigators, but they didn't take it, so she kept it in her purse. Jewel told me she personally saw the apparent fragment. To the Cunha family, it felt like investigators had dug their heels into the theory that Rose's own son had beaten her to death. In Jewel's view, that early focus left other possibilities underdeveloped, and created problems that followed the case for years. It would take more than a decade and a new look at old evidence before investigators focused on someone else entirely. The questions that existed at the beginning of the investigation stayed with the family, who had gotten into Rose's house without forcing their way inside, who had attacked her with such brutality using items from her own home, and why? For years, Rose's case remained unsolved. Her family continued living with the grief of her loss, the weight of unanswered questions, and the painful cloud of suspicion that it followed Bobby simply because he had been asleep upstairs when his mother was found. But according to Jewel, it was Bobby and another family member, who went to the district attorney to ask that Rose's case be reopened, and the DA listened. Nearly two decades after Rose was killed, the case was reopened as part of a cold case effort that began in 2019 under Bristol County District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III. Investigators went back to the evidence, and this time, their attention landed on one of the most unusual objects from the crime scene - the conch shell. When investigators reviewed the crime scene photos again, they paid close attention to the unusual markings on Rose's face. The suspicion raised early in the case nagged at them. The marks appeared to line up with the spines of the broken conch shell that had been found near her body. Based on the force they believed would have been necessary to create those indentation marks on Rose's face. Investigators developed a theory. Whoever attacked Rose may have put their hand inside the shell to grip it while striking her. If you're having a hard time picturing it, a conch shell is the kind of large heavy seashell many people associate with tropical beaches or coastal souvenir shops. It usually spirals to a point at one end, with a wide opening on the other, and some varieties have raised points or spines along the outside. A conch shell can be decorative and beautiful. I have at least one in my own home from a trip to the Exuma's nearly a decade ago. As pretty as they are, the shells are also dense, hard, and awkward to hold with one hand depending on the size and spines. Investigators believed the particular shell from Rose's home may have been gripped from the inside, with the attacker's hand inserted into the shell's opening, fingers in palm encircling the shell as if holding a cup of coffee, turning something Rose kept as part of her beach-themed decor into a weapon. That made the shell especially important. If the killer had held it in that way, there was a chance they left biological material inside. So, investigators had it processed for DNA evidence. They also processed samples from Rose's fingernail scrapings. Biological evidence from Rose's right hand was tested for a potential YSTR profile. A type of DNA testing that focuses on male genetic material and can identify males who share a similar paternal genetic line. When that testing came back, the YSTR profile from biological evidence on Rose's right hand was consistent with the Kunya paternal line, meaning it could have come from a male relative connected to Rose through her father's side of the family. That profile didn't identify one individual person. It did, however, narrow the direction investigators were looking because within the Kunya genetic line, there was one relative whose name stood out for reasons that went beyond DNA. The name belonged to Rose's half-brother, David Reed. Rose Marie Moniz and her half-brother David Reed shared the same father, but different mothers. Early reporting and later court arguments described Rose's family as close and blended, but when I spoke with her brother Gary and niece Jewel, they explained that the reality was more complicated than that. According to Jewel, her grandfather had an entire second family. Two sons born outside his marriage, and Rose, Gary, and their other siblings didn't know about their half-brothers for years. The two sides of the family weren't really introduced until the siblings were adults. In Jewel's words, her grandfather kept a secret family for a pretty long time. According to Gary and Jewel, David wasn't a constant presence in Rose's life. Jewel said David was closest with her father, Gary, and her uncle George, and while she remembered David coming to some birthday parties when she was young, she didn't remember him at major family events for much of her childhood. Gary also said he didn't remember David being at family reunions. When I asked whether David and Rose hung out, whether they had a relationship beyond the family connection, Jewel's answer was direct. No. Even if David's place in the family was complicated, he wasn't a total stranger. He had some connection to the Kunias, and he had been present enough that after Rose's death, he served as one of the Paul Barers at her funeral. But what stood out the most about David wasn't his familial link to Rose? David was already tied to another violent attack. That case dated back to June 10, 2003, a little more than two years after Rose was killed. Around 1045 that night, a man heard a woman screaming for help near Oceanside Plaza in New Bedford. When he looked outside, he saw a woman covered in blood. Her name was Maribel Martinez, Aligria. According to reporting by Will Catcher for the Republican, Maribel said a man had taken her to a secluded location in his truck, beaten her with a tire iron, pushed her out of the truck, and left her for dead before taking off with her purse. Maribel survived by pretending to be dead, waiting until her attacker had gone before calling for help. The suspect was unidentified until a few weeks later when Maribel saw the man she believed had attacked her, circling the block around her house. She called the detective assigned to her case until family members the man was outside in a car. Her family members chased after him in a minivan, and during that chase, the man crashed into another car, then tried to flee again, only to crash into a police cruiser driven by an officer who had joined the pursuit. Even after that crash, he still tried to get away, but officers were able to stop and arrest him. Maribel was brought to the scene where she identified the man as her attacker. It was David Reid. David was charged with robbery and assault in connection with the attack on Maribel, as well as charges related to ramming the police cruiser, but after he was released on bail prior to his trial in 2004, he disappeared. David became a fugitive for about 11 years, moving through Hawaii, Florida, and Alabama before he was finally arrested again in 2015. By then, the prosecution of Maribel's attack had become more complicated. Maribel at died of natural causes just six months before David was back in custody. The charges directly related to the robbery and attack on Maribel were dismissed without prejudice, because prosecutors believed they didn't have enough evidence at the time. However, David was still prosecuted for jumping bail, and for the charges connected to the police cruiser crash. He was later convicted in sentence to three and a half to four years in state prison. But here's the most critical part of this conviction when it came to Rose's case. David was ordered to provide a DNA sample, which was used to create a profile for submission to a DNA database. That required DNA profile from David changed everything. Years after David. a disappear from Massachusetts, after Maribel died, and after the original charges and her attack became harder to prosecute, his DNA profile became part of a system that investigators could search. When Rosemarimones' case was reopened, investigators finally had something they didn't have before, a DNA profile from David in the system. The YSTR profile identified from biological evidence on Rose's right hand already pointed to someone within her father's genetic line, and David was in that category, but that wasn't enough. They wanted to see what the shell had to say. According to investigators, when they ran the biological evidence recovered from the conch shell, turned presumed murder weapon, a DNA profile obtained from the inside of the shell matched David's DNA profile. In 2020, after David's DNA profile was identified on the evidence, police tried to speak with him at his home in Dartmouth. David only talked to detectives briefly, and soon after, he left the state. Finally, on September 10, 2021, 53-year-old David W. Reed was arrested at a shelter in Providence, Rhode Island. After delays due to COVID-19 exposure, in January of 2022, David entered a not guilty plea to the murder and robbery of Rose Marie Munies and was held without bail. For Rose's family, the arrest was a stunning turn. David wasn't a stranger. He was Rose's half-brother. He was a family member in a complicated way, sure, but he was still family. They knew about David's prior history, and the brutal attack on the other woman. They remember him being on the run and finally arrested. They even remembered conversations about David, with his friends and other family members lobbing the uncomfortable question their way. Do you think David could have killed Rose, they would ask? Gary says he'd considered it in the past, but doubted it, until the family learned about the DNA evidence. More than 20 years after Rose Marie Munies was found dead in her own home, her family finally felt like justice was closer than it had ever been. At the time of his arrest, David Reed was wanted for even more than his alleged connection to Rose's murder. Rose had reignited the investigation into the assault of Maribel Martinez-Alegria II. They'd reportedly obtained additional evidence in that case, including corroborating witness statements indicating that David himself had admitted to assaulting Maribel. That case moved forward first, and David ended up pleading guilty for the attack on Maribel, including armed assault with intent to murder, armed robbery, and assault in battery with a dangerous weapon. He was sentenced to 8-12 years in state prison. So to be clear, he admitted to a violent attack, leaving a woman for dead, and robbing her in a case that shared many similarities with the attack on Rose. Finally, in January of 2026, it was time for Rose's case to see a courtroom. Her family, including her son Bobby and brother Gary, sat in the gallery as the Commonwealth detailed the circumstances of the day Rose was violently ripped from their lives. According to trial coverage by Dan Madaros for the Standard Times, prosecutors argued that David went to Rose's house that night looking for money to buy heroin. According to the Commonwealth's theory, Rose refused him, so David grabbed for one of the closest weapons he could find, the fireplace poker. Prosecutors said David chased Rose through the house, which they argued explained the disorder investigators found inside, items docked over tables disturbed, things strewn across the floor. They told the jury Rose tried to escape into the bathroom, but David struck her there. Prosecutors alleged that David stole cash from her purse, and then realized he couldn't leave Rose alive as a witness, so he attacked her again with whatever was nearby, including the conch shell. The Commonwealth's case leaned heavily on the DNA evidence from that shell. Investigators believed the killer had put a hand inside the conch shell to grip it while striking Rose, and prosecutors argued that the DNA profile found inside the shell matched David Reed. But David's defense attorney, Frank Kamra, challenged the weight of that evidence. According to Charles Winnocker's reporting for the Harold News, attorney Kamra argued that the District Attorney's Office had greatly exaggerated the DNA results, and emphasized that part of the testing involved paternal Y DNA, which could point to a family line rather than one specific person. The defense also argued that even if David's DNA was inside the conch shell, it could have gotten there in some other innocuous way. Part of his defense was that he had been inside Rose's house before, so he could have handled the shell then. When I talk to Rose's brother Gary, he said he had never personally seen David at Rose's house, but sure, it was possible David had visited at some point. Many Kamra also argued that DNA evidence had been taken from the conch shell, but not from the fireplace poker or cast iron kettle, even though investigators believed all three items had been used as weapons. The defense challenged the prosecution's theory of motive, too. Prosecutors alleged David killed Rose to steal money for heroin, but Kamra argued there was no evidence David was using heroin at the time. He also pointed to David's continued involvement with the family after Rose's death. He went to family barbecues and had even been best man at one brother's wedding. Attorney Kamra suggested the evidence pointed more toward Bobby, Rose's son, alleging that Bobby had taken ecstasy and that T and his mother argued in the past, but Kamra also acknowledged that he didn't think there was enough evidence to convict Bobby, either. The defense argued that the violence against Rose looked personal, overkill in Kamra's view, done by someone who really had it out for her, and David just didn't fit that. Gary told me that on top of testimony about the DNA evidence, the jury also heard a significant amount of testimony about David's tack on Maribel Martinez, allegria, enough that he estimated it made up about a third of the trial. He said he was also struck by how many people from David's life testified against him. "He didn't have anybody that came up and said one good thing about him." After three weeks of testimony, the case went to the jury on February 2, 2026. During deliberations, the jury sent the judge a question about whether they could consider actions that suggested consciousness of guilt, specifically whether that kind of evidence could be used with other evidence when deciding whether a reasonable doubt remained. Perhaps the jury was weighing David's flight from the state after detectives tracked him down for an interview. The judge gave additional instructions telling jurors that if the Commonwealth had proven David engaged in behavior, amounting to flight, they could take that into account and consider whether it showed consciousness of guilt. But the jury still struggled. At one point they said they couldn't reach a verdict on either count. The judge sent them back to continue deliberating. About an hour later, they said again they were deadlocked and that more deliberations would not change the outcome. The judge sent them home for the weekend and instructed them to return the following week. Not Monday, the jury reported that they had reached a verdict on the robbery charge, but not on the murder charge. The judge then gave them additional instructions known as the Rudry Guest Charge, meant to encourage jurors to keep working toward a unanimous verdict without surrendering their honest beliefs. Eventually, the jury did reach a verdict on both charges, on what should have been roses 67th birthday, David Reed, not guilty of murder and not guilty of robbery. Rose's son, Bobby, was in the courtroom that day and started recording audio on his phone when the verdict was read, capturing his family's reactions in the moments after as they spoke to the prosecutor. In the devastation, the Cunya family turned to their faith. My conversation with Gary and Joel was a few months after the acquittal, and Gary said he feels the same way now as he did then. He feels Rose and the family were denied justice, and that David got away with murder. The not guilty verdict didn't bring closure. It brought Rose's family back to a painful version of where they had started. No one legally responsible. roses murder, and no answer that felt acceptable. Gary felt like the DNA inside the shell should have mattered more than it ultimately did. He also questioned the jury's process. He said the trial dragged on for almost a month, and he felt he could see exhaustion on the jurors' faces. In his view, after all the jury questions and additional instructions, the case should have ended in a mistrial, not an acquittal. But legally, the outcome was clear. David was acquitted of murdering Rosemary Moniz. He was also found not guilty of robbing her. But he didn't walk free. He was still serving his 8-12-year sentence for the 2003 attack on Maribel Martinez-Alegria, and he remained in a maximum security prison after Rosas' trial ended. Rosas' niece, Jewel, is left with complicated feelings about the conclusion of her aunt's case. She knew about David's past. She heard the case against him, and yet he was still her uncle. I want you to hear this from Jewel directly because I don't think anyone will ever understand the complexities of a family member becoming a suspect in another family member's murder, unless you've lived it. It's really hard when it's family because I love my uncle, and like you kind of learn that it's okay to have loved the person you thought they were or the person that they were around you, but that's not who he is now. So it's okay to have like both of those feelings at the same time. For the entire family, one of the most important things after the verdict was making sure suspicion did not settle back onto Bobby. Bobby had an alibi, and according to Jewel, he also gave police a gas receipt from his way home that morning, to the family that receipt supported his account of when he returned to the house. Not only that, Jewel told me that Bobby wouldn't have had the strength to carry out something so physical and violent. She never knew her cousin to have a violent streak, and he wasn't strong. Still, Jewel understands why the suspicion was there in the first place. Bobby was home when Rose's body was found, and Jewel says she questions how he didn't notice the trashed house or the bloody bathroom scene, even if he did sneak into the house through the back way when he got home late that night. Jewel also raised another question. Rose had a big pit bull who was extremely protective of her. The dog didn't even allow the family to give Rose a hug, so why didn't the dog protect Rose that night? Even in the face of the other evidence presented at trial, these questions and others weaved together into reasonable doubt, and that reasonable doubt was not addressed to the satisfaction of the jury. The case now sits in a difficult place, more than 20 years after Rose was found on the bathroom floor of her home. Her family is still left with grief, anger, and a verdict they don't believe reflects the truth. What has kept your family going these past few decades through all of the loss and the grief and the reopening of these wounds? What keeps you going? Family, I feel almost everybody in my family at least once. For Gary, family remains the most important part of all of this. For years, the grief, the unanswered questions, and the years of suspicion splintered the closeness the Cunya family once had, but in a way no one could have expected. The arrest and trial brought them back toward each other. It was a reminder for Rose's siblings that they could still lean on one another through the grief and heartache. On Rose Maureenie's headstone are the words, "Those we love remain with us, for love itself lives on." And when Rose's family talks about her now, that love is still there, in the memories that are small enough to seem ordinary until you understand how much they mean. Her brother, John's fondest memories are of family trips to New Hampshire, staying at the drummer boy, with all the siblings together and all the kids running around. Before Rose's murder changed the shape of the family, those trips were part of what held them close. Her sister Kimberly remembered Rose wanting cinnamon buns one day, so she took her to the mall for cinnamon. It was a simple thing, but Rose was so happy. Gary remembered being at a bar having drinks with friends one night when the Easter Bunny walked in, full costume, no way to tell who was inside. Then he realized it was Rose. She thought it was hilarious. That was Rose, quiet, but playful, reserved, but not cold. The aunt who slipped candy to the kids, the woman who made holiday baskets that looked professionally done. The person who valued hospitality and doated on visitors when they stepped inside her home, her safe space. Maybe the best way to honor Rose is by not losing sight of those little ways people show love. A family trip, a holiday basket, a costume worn just to make people laugh, a piece of candy slipped into a child's hand when no one else is looking. More than 20 years after she was killed, Rose Marie Moniz remains with the people who loved her, not only through the pain of her loss, but through the love that survived it. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram @DarkDown East. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers. I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East. Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Adia Chuck. I think Chuck would approve.