Elderly Woman Found Dead Under Stove

Alexandria Berstecher was an 89-year-old woman living in an apartment complex for seniors in Poquonnock Village, Connecticut. She suffered from glaucoma, arthritis, and colon cancer. She lived off of her late husband’s Navy pension.

Her son Roland, 63, lived nearby with his partner Joann Degenhart. He was a security guard at a casino, the Mohegan Sun.

Alexandria regularly spoke to her son. He took her shopping once a week and took her to the bank every month to pay her rent. Alexandria also kept a logbook of the people who visited her and the phone calls she received. Most of her days were spent in the dayroom with her boyfriend who also lived in her apartment complex.

On Christmas day of 2004, Roland went to his mother’s building to bring her lunch and presents. According to Roland, Alexandria had not spent Christmas Eve with the family because of her arthritis, though they spoke on the phone at 3 PM.

He rang the doorbell for 307 but there was no answer. Nevertheless, he let himself in the building door with a spare key that a neighbor had previously given him. He repeatedly knocked on his mother’s apartment door but there was no response. A neighbor offered to call the maintenance man, who opened the door for Roland.

Alexandria’s apartment, which had normally been neat and tidy, was a mess — chairs had been knocked over, kitchen drawers were missing, and her bed was unmade. Her small dog was also in the apartment, unharmed.

Upon entering the kitchen, Roland saw his mother’s legs and lower torso sticking out from under the stove. The stove drawer had been removed and Alexandria was stuffed, face up and naked from the waist down; she was only wearing a button-down cardigan.

The authorities were called and after examining the body closer, noticed she had a broken rib and various cuts and bruises on her body. There was hair on her elbow, which later revealed to be insignificant, and blood around her body.

Authorities took Roland to the dayroom and asked him a few questions. After fifteen minutes he was taken to the police station and put in a questioning room. Meanwhile, his partner Joann, her son Edward, and his girlfriend Jennifer were also separately put in questioning rooms.

Police aggressively questioned Roland for the next nine hours, at times ordering him to confess to murdering his mother. Though the police did not read him his rights, he was not allowed to leave the station and was escorted anytime he needed to go to the bathroom. At one point, Roland began crying because he wanted to leave.

The family was freed at 10:30 PM. According to police, Roland admitted that he had lied to his mother, claiming he had to work on Christmas Eve because Joann did not like having her over — due to her being unfriendly and banging into things because of her glaucoma.

While the investigation was ongoing, Joann’s son Edward believed that he was being spied on by authorities. Though authorities never asked the family and wrote on the official statement that nothing was stolen, Roland claims that a large potted cactus and $359 were missing from the apartment.

No sign of sexual abuse was found, but the family does not rule out the possibility. Interestingly, Roland did notice that the electrical socket near the stove had been tampered with but that there were no tools around. Alexandria’s logbook was confiscated and never given back to the family.

On the night of Alexandria’s death, her downstairs neighbor heard loud banging coming from her apartment. They banged on the ceiling with a broom and it stopped. It wasn’t the first time they heard the pounding, it would often occur on weekends after midnight — but never so loudly.

At the time, two registered sex offenders lived on the same floor as Alexandria. One had been out of town and as a result, was never questioned by police. The other had not been home when the police stopped by for questioning. They briefly spoke to his wife but never tried to contact him again.

Police released little information during the investigation, leaving alarmed neighbors to fear for their safety. They even had their own suspect, the building’s superintendent. The man, who was an alcoholic and gambling addict, had a habit of unexpectedly entering people’s apartments at night.

The building had security cameras but there were no tapes in them.

Alexandria’s official cause of death is electrocution from the wiring. Authorities deemed her death a suicide, however, it was later changed to an accident.

She was buried next to her husband, Lewis G. Berstecher Jr., at Rhode Island Veterans Cemetery on New Year's Eve.

...

Check out Cat Leigh's Medium publication for more true crime stories: True Crime by Cat Leigh.