Tarlton Law Library
Jamail Center for Legal Research

     At 3 o'clock A.M. on Saturday, February 13, 1988, the morning before St. Valentine's Day, Dr. Scott Roston informed authorities of the cruise ship Stardancer that his bride of nine days, Karen, had gone overboard. The bereaved honeymooner's accounts of the accident were inconsistent and riddled with implausibilities. At first, chiropractor Roston said that his wife had been blown off the Stardancer's jogging track where the newlyweds, both fitness enthusiasts, had been running. The ship's officers must have received this statement with considerable skepticism for the seas were running smooth twenty miles off San Diego as the ship headed for the Port of Long Beach, California after its week-long cruise to Mexico; the wind velocity was no more than five miles per hour. When his initial effort failed to persuade, Roston was ready with another version of the tragedy; Karen, he now recalled, had "fallen" overboard, and he had tried to grab her without success. The fall and attempted rescue were not easy to visualize unless the victim was a high-jumper, since Karen was five feet three inches tall and the ship's rail was three feet six inches high.
     At the time Roston reported his wife missing, his face showed triangular gouges and a four-inch scratch. He told the crew that he had hit his head on a gangway control box, but no blood, hair or marks were found on the box. Photographs showed that the box had no sharp protrusions that could have caused the facial injuries.
     The Coast Guard found Karen Roston's body in Pacific waters thirty miles southwest of San Diego on Saturday afternoon, February 13. The body was kept afloat by air trapped in her clothing. Medical examiners noted that had she attempted to swim after entering the water, the air would have been forced out of her clothes and that therefore she must have been unconscious when she went overboard; she had subsequently died from drowning. The signs of hemorrhage in her neck and eyes and the warping of her neckbones were evidence of manual strangulation. Material from the rubberized jogging track imbedded in her clothing suggested that she had been pressed to the deck with considerable force. Parts of her earrings were found on the deck eleven and a half feet from the railing, together with strands of her strawberry blond hair that appeared to have been yanked from her head.
     Questioned about their observations of the honeymooning couple, several passengers recounted episodes of tension. A vacationer who shared a table with them stated that Dr. Roston was angry with his bride because she ate sweets and did not know which eating utensils to 

choose from the "complex" silverware settings. The chiropractor was also seen quarreling with a woman on deck about forty-five minutes to one hour before he reported his wife overboard.
     Scott Roston was arrested in Long Beach by federal authorities on suspicion of murder and was held without bail at the Terminal Island detention center. Within the next few days the tale of the newlyweds' courtship was carried in the columns of the Los Angeles Times; readers learned that the Rostons' brief relationship, which ended with Karen's fall into the sea, had begun as a result of Scott's tumble down a flight of stairs. At the time of his injury Roston was in Florida where he had come from California with hopes of advancing his career, and Karen Waltz, employed as a masseuse, had treated him twice weekly as a part of his physical therapy after his accident. Scott was immediately attracted to the young therapist, with whom he seemed to have much in common, particularly their shared passion for physical fitness. According to her father Richard Waltz, Karen's years of devotion to ballet, modern dance and tai chi, and a daily regimen of ten-mile walks had made her strong and agile.
     The first time Roston visited Karen's mother Roberta, he brought her roses from his garden and sat in the Waltzes' house telling them how much he loved their daughter. Roberta, however, had her reservations; she thought that "he is too perfect, not a hair out of place, perfect physique, looked as if he had a lot of money, which now I know he doesn't." Mrs. Waltz's suspicions about her future son-in-law's solvency troubled her so much that she had the "pretty little" pear-shaped diamond engagement ring appraised, wondering if he had given her daughter a cubic zirconia.
     Once in custody, Dr. Roston produced a third, and by far the most bizarre, explanation of his bride's death, asserting that Israeli agents had killed his "beloved wife" because he "had published an expose last year of the countless crimes of [their] government." The prisoner was referring to his book entitled Nightmare in Israel, which he paid Vantage Press to publish in early 1987; testimony subsequently indicated that only one of the thousand copies printed had been sold. In 1978 Roston and his parents had emigrated to Israel where he opened an unlicensed chiropractic clinic. In late 1979, he spent more than two months in jail and in a mental hospital where he claimed to have been drugged and brutalized. After he "refused to be bribed" into marrying a neighbor's niece, Roston asserted, he was arrested on a false charge at the behest of the "Israeli Mafia", accused of having beaten up and robbed a member of the neighbor's family. In March 1987, about the time of the publication of Nightmare in Israel, sheriffs of Palm Beach County, Florida received a report from Roston's parents about an attempt to 

kidnap their son outside a shopping mall. According to Roston, two Israelis in a white van grabbed him and proclaimed in Hebrew, "Israel wants you." Roston said he broke free and shot one of his would-be captors before speeding away in his Toyota. "Israel took its best shot," Roston told the Palm Beach Post, "and they blew it."
     In his opening statement at Roston's second-degree murder trial, which began in late February 1989, defense attorney David Kenner noted that two Israeli men were aboard the Stardancer. Roston's claims, he conceded, "may at first blush appear impossible, contrived, unbelievable", but he asked the jury to believe that "these kinds of things do happen in the world of international intrigue."
     The defense made no effort to overcome the prosecution's medical evidence or the testimony of fellow passengers about the newlyweds' shipboard squabbles. The only evidence introduced by defense counsel Kenner were records showing that there were two Israeli nationals on the ship when Karen Roston went overboard. In its rebuttal case, the prosecution surprised Kenner by bringing to the stand Maurice Haziza, one of the two Israeli passengers. He testified that he was not a secret agent for the Israeli government, but a wedding photographer on vacation; he and his traveling companion, Emil Yaron, had visited Disneyland and Universal Studios before embarking on the Mexico cruise to complete their vacation after photographing the wedding of a friend.
     The jury, unimpressed with the espionage defense, found Roston guilty of second degree murder on the high seas. United States District Judge James Ideman sentenced Roston to life in prison without parole, observing: "This is one of the cruelest crimes this court has ever seen. It is this court's hope that this defendant never be released."
     On appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit the defense put aside its Israeli revenge theory, arguing instead that the trial court had erred in failing to instruct the jury that it could have convicted Roston of the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter if persuaded that there was sufficient evidence of provocation by the victim to arouse a reasonable and ordinary person to kill her. Roston's lawyers contended that strong evidence of provocation was provided by testimony concerning disagreements over Karen's eating sweets, tension over the use of the silverware settings, and the inference that there was a "physical altercation" between the newlyweds shortly before Karen's death. The appellate court, after observing that disputes over sweets and silverware could not possibly provoke a reasonable and ordinary person to kill, inferred that a prolonged struggle between the Rostons had preceded the murder. Still there was no evidence, in the court's view, that "the scratching of Roston's face provoked the altercation."

     Although sustaining the conviction, the Court of Appeals remanded for resentencing. The appellate opinion noted that by imposing a life sentence, the trial court had applied the penalty required under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines for first-degree murder even though the defendant was only convicted of murder in the second degree. In November 1994 Scott Roston was resentenced to a term of thirty-three years, nine months.

* This article was previously published in 145 New Law Journal 1762 (Nov. 24, 1995)>