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Philadelphia-Area Man Found Dead and Bound in His Bathtub, and His Ex and Another Man Were Behind It
Authorities discovered a "horrendous scene" after rushing to the Bensalem, Pennsylvania apartment of Christian Rojas, whose friend found him dead in a bathtub.
When Christian Rojas failed to pick up his friend Joe as planned at the airport, the stranded traveler took a cab to Rojas’ apartment in Bensalem, Pennsylvania.
Entering through an unlocked patio door, Joe found Rojas dead in a bathtub. Instead of calling 911, he went to the police station to report the crime at 2:30 a.m. on August 27, 2005.
Officials rushed to the apartment. “It was a very, very horrendous scene,” said Andrew Aninsman, then a detective with the Bensalem Township Police Department.
“His face was very discolored. It was evident that he had been there for a day or two,” Aninsman said in the “American Nightmare” episode of Philly Homicide, airing Saturdays at 9/8c p.m. on Oxygen.
Who was Christian Rojas?
Detectives learned that Rojas, 28, was a computer programmer from Costa Rica who’d moved to the Philadelphia area a few years earlier to pursue his career. He worked for a loan company in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Rojas, who was very close to his family in his home country, had planned to return there. He’d secured a position with an American company that was moving to Costa Rica. But his life was violently cut short.
When Rojas was found by police in his bathroom tub, he was fully clothed with electrical cord wrapped around his legs. "His hands were behind his back,” said Eliot Gross, then a Bensalem Township Police Department detective. “There appeared to be tube socks tied around his neck.”
Crime scene showed Christian Rojas was "tortured"
The cause of death wasn’t apparent. “We didn’t know if it was blunt trauma. It looked like he may have been stabbed in the head,” said Aninsman. “There was blood all over the shower.”
The bathroom had signs of a brutal encounter. “Clearly he had been tortured,” said David Zellis, a former Bucks County First Assistant District Attorney. “There were a number of condoms that clearly had just been thrown in there.”
Police painstakingly gathered evidence from the apartment. They came upon a broken framed photograph of the victim with another man and a woman. They also collected an answering machine with messages on it, Gross told Philly Homicide.
Rojas kept a safe in his apartment, according to his friend Joe. The safe and Rojas’ car were missing.
Police questioned why Joe didn’t call 911 when he made the shocking discovery. “My Spidey senses were going off the charts,” said Aninsman.
But after confirming Joe’s alibi and determining that the witness had no cuts or wounds that could have been associated with the murder, police cleared him as a suspect.
What did Christian Rojas' autopsy reveal?
The autopsy revealed that Rojas died from a “mixture of drowning... and strangulation,” said forensic pathologist Dr. Ian Hood. “He had multiple lacerations over the scalp and a couple over the face, and some other blunt impacts as well.”
Hood figured that Rojas had died within 24 hours of being found.
Investigators questioned Rojas’ employers who, detectives discovered, had loaned him money. The case took a turn when authorities learned that the brothers Rojas was working for had alleged ties to the Italian Mafia, according to Philly Homicide.
Police found that the brothers’ supposed mob ties couldn’t be verified beyond rumors, said Dave Nieves, a former detective with the Bensalem Township Police Department. The employers had solid alibis for their whereabouts at the time of the murder.
In the end, they were found to be “huge fans of Christian. They loved him as an employee,” journalist and author Matt Coughlin told Philly Homicide. "They were glad to see him thrive and succeed."
Clues from the answering machine
As detectives looked for fingerprints and DNA evidence, they also focused on the answer machine. “There were three messages from somebody named Heather,” said Zellis, adding that the communications grew increasingly angry.
Around the same time, John D’Angelo, the man pictured with Rojas in the smashed photo frame, came to the police station. “The people in the photograph were a married couple, John D'Angelo and Anna Munoz,” said Gross. “John stated that he was a coworker of Christian’s.”
D’Angelo explained that the three were friends and had lived together for a short while before the couple got engaged. He had loaned Rojas the green Saturn that was now missing. D’Angelo had a solid alibi and was cleared as a suspect.
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Police learned that Rojas had been dating a woman named Heather, who police determined was the same person who’d left the voice messages.
“Christian had found out that Heather had been using illicit narcotics and had ended the relationship because of that,” said Gross.
Police discovered that Heather had lost her job and apartment, and that Rojas had tried to help her. “A week before the murder, he allowed her to stay with him,” said Zellis.
Police determined Rojas’s ex-girlfriend to be Heather Lavelle, who’d had run-ins with law enforcement. “She was arrested for drug possession, and then a few weeks later, she was involved in a domestic dispute with a man named James Savage,” Nieves told Philly Homicide.
Savage had been arrested for pulling a rifle on his ex-wife, among other charges.
Heather Lavelle and James Savage become suspects
“Upon speaking with James’ mother, we learned that she had last seen her son on Friday, August 26, the day before Christian’s body was found,” said Gross.
Through dogged detective work, police determined that the suspects stayed at a Comfort Inn hotel on the night of the murder. Through hotel security footage, police confirmed that they were traveling in the green Saturn.
Police offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrests of Savage and Lavelle. The pair were tracked to Dewey Beach, a Delaware town about two hours south of Bensalem.
On September 2, the green Saturn was spotted by officials in Nags Head, North Carolina. After a high-speed chase, the suspects were detained. “It was them against the world,” Nieves said.
Bensalem police flew to North Carolina to interview the suspects and to comb through the vehicle. The search turned up bloody clothes, brass knuckles, and Rojas’ billfold. “The wallet was still wet,” Gross said.
James Savage admits to knocking Rojas out
When questioned by authorities, Savage claimed there were three men inside Rojas’ apartment with a gun and a knife.
“James said the guys were in Christian's apartment to get drugs, and they attacked him,” said Coughlin. “He had to steal Christian's car and flee for his own safety.”
Police didn’t buy Savage's story. “If you have a home evasion, you're not going to steal Christian's car and then leave and go to two different hotels,” said Aninsman.
“James eventually admits he and Heather went to Christian's apartment, hoping to find money in his safe,” said Coughlin. After they found the vault to be empty, Savage violently knocked Rojas out.
“James and Heather then left the apartment and stated to detectives that Christian was alive when they left, but when they came back, he was dead,” said Gross.
The pair placed Rojas in the bathtub, bound him with cords and staged the scene to look like a robbery, they said.
Lavelle said that she and Savage went to Rojas’ home to find money for drugs. But she said she heard Savage and Rojas fighting in the bathroom. “She’s dumping 90% of it on James,” said Gross.
“Heather Lavelle admitted that she had told James Savage that she was sexually assaulted by Christian Rojas in order to get him to inflict damage,” said Zellis. Police now understood why the condoms had been tossed into the tub.
“Heather also admitted that Rojas never did anything to her,” said Aninsman. “Heather was the brains behind the operation.”
What happened to Heather Lavelle and James Savage?
Savage and Lavelle were arrested for first-degree murder in Rojas' killing and faced the death penalty. They pleaded guilty and were both sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Find out more about the case in the “American Nightmare” episode of Philly Homicide. The series airs on Saturdays at 9/8c p.m. on Oxygen.
