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For a second time, a jury in Hackensack convicted Daniel Rochat on Wednesday of all charges in the brutal September 2012 slaying of real estate agent Barbara Vernieri in her East Rutherford home.
Rochat, 48, of Wood-Ridge was originally convicted in June 2017 of beating Vernieri, then pouring gasoline on her and around her home before setting it on fire to cover up the crime scene.
Prosecutors had told them the Waldwick native was burglarizing Vernieri, whom he’d known since childhood, to get the money to repay an $11,000 debt to an ex-girlfriend who'd just broken up with him.
Rochat "entered the victim’s home, beat the victim about the head and face, than set her body on fire while she was still alive," Bergen County Prosecutor Mark Musella said.
He also took Vernieri's cellphone, the prosecutor said, which helped nail him.
Rochat contended that he was home sleeping at the time, but the cellphone records put him in the neighborhood at the time, the evidence showed.
His defense team objected to the introduction of DNA evidence that had been analyzed under the “Forensic Statistical Tool” -- more commonly known as the "low copy number" -- during the first trial.
The appeals judge agreed and tossed Rochat’s conviction in 2022.
The DNA evidence “did not positively identify” Rochat, the panel wrote in its ruling. “Instead, it indicated defendant could not be excluded as a contributor and the profile would be expected to occur in 1 of 333 [C]aucasian individuals.
“We do not find this evidence to be overwhelming.”
There was other evidence, as well, that the appeals judges said jurors shouldn't have heard.
Senior Assistant Prosecutor Grootenboer and Assistant Prosecutor David Malfitano tried the 15-day do-over, which ended with the April 24 guilty verdicts following a little less than three days of deliberations.
Vernieri was a business associate of Rochat’s father, Gene, who was a principal at Kurgan-Bergen Realtors Agency, where she met the killer.
The murder bore similarities to two other Bergen County unsolveds, both in 2010, in which elderly victims were doused with an accelerant and set ablaze.
Dolores Alliotts, 69, was stabbed to death and her Palisades Park home set on fire in April 2010. Five months later, 74-year-old Joan Davis of Teaneck suffered the same fate.
In each of those cases, as with Vernieri’s murder, prosecutors said the fires were set in an attempt to cover up the crimes.
The advantage in the Vernieri case was that East Rutherford police and firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze, allowing a forensic examination of her body that authorities didn’t have in the two previous cases.
Still, Rochat’s case was one of the longest to finally come to trial in Bergen County history.
Defense attorney Anthony Pope told jurors his client must have been a combination of Houdini, Spider Man and the Invisable Man because no evidence linking him to the murder was found at the scene, in his apartment, in his car or even in his parents' home.
Jurors weren't convinced. They convicted Rochat of murder, felony murder, aggravated arson and desecrating human remains, among other counts.
Superior Court Judge Christopher Kazlau scheduled sentencing for June 11.
Rochat, who's been held at the Bergen County Jail since Jan. 31, will then be returned to New Jersey State Prison in Trenton.
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