Jury selection is scheduled to begin today for 49-year-old Gregory Rouzer, and SCI Pine Grove inmate who is accused of trying to hire someone to kill a man he’d already tried to kill twice before.
Rouzer is from Fulton County. In 2008, shot a man named Randy Walters and Walters’ girlfriend, but Walters wounded Rouzer and he was captured after a few days.He was found guilty of attempted homicide and related offenses and sentenced to 14 to 50 years in prison. In 2009, while awaiting trial for the shooting, he tried to hire a hit man to kill Walters and his girlfriend but was caught in the attempt and five to ten years more were added to his sentence.
In January of this year, Rouzer pleaded guilty to once again trying to hire a hit man to kill Walters, using his girlfriend, 54-year-old Laraine Patterson as a go-between. Patterson gave undercover state trooper Rebecca Fabich, who was using the name “Joanie Pepperoni”, $5,000 to hire a hit man, but was taken into custody. She was acquitted last month on two charges of solicitation to commit homicide and conspiracy to the same offense after he attorney said she had been duped by Rouzer and did not know that she was making a payment on a murder, but thought instead that she was paying for a private detective to investigate corruption in Rouzer’s first trial.
Rouzer pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy to aggravated assault, with agreement to non-prosecution for solicitation to commit homicide and conspiracy to homicide. On June 5th, Judge Thomas Bianco granted Rouzer’s motion to withdraw that guilty plea, meaning the original charges are now in play again as the trial begins.
