In an affidavit filed during their divorce proceedings, Rieger also claimed that Teresa broke into his office to read his diary and steal documents, and that she had beaten him with one of his golf clubs. She sought ownership of their home but didn’t get it. She reportedly took her revenge by taking Rieger’s war mementos, medals, and log books, all that he cared most about from his glory days.
Sometime later, Vincent and Teresa fought over Brent’s custody. Although no one who knew them—including Rieger’s grown daughter—ever said that Teresa didn’t love the boy, the Court felt she was not stable enough to be the custodial parent.
Judge Lynne Hufnagel found Teresa to be self-absorbed, emotionally needy, lacking in empathy, and slow to forgive. “Her profile,” the Court wrote, “reflects a person who has difficulty in maintaining close relationships, who is reluctant to trust others, and a person who is vulnerable to feeling victimized.”
Rieger’s daughter commented that the boy touched Teresa’s tender side. “She totally loved Brent, and she was as good a mother as she could be. She wanted only the best for him.”
But Teresa had never had parenting models, and she herself was as hungry for nurturing as a child. It was too late for her to ever catch up. Try as she might, her emotional outbursts made her a less-than-perfect mother.
In the end, Vincent Rieger was given custody of their son, although Teresa was allowed visitation.
In 1993, Teresa took another husband: Mike Mansfield, a realtor, twenty years older than she. That union survived for three and a half years. A year later, she married her fourth husband, Mario Perez, 42.
Teresa was 32 now, but her weaknesses had only been exacerbated; her temper was more likely to erupt than ever. Perez made a good living as an expert in finance who worked for an oil and gas corporation.
Teresa drank a little too much and may have started using drugs at that point. She also had another, much stronger addiction that took over her life and signaled trouble for her marriage. She had discovered the rush that came to her when she gambled. She owed almost $10,000 to more than a dozen casinos before she married Perez. Armed with his credit cards, she became an even more frequent sight at the casino tables and machines. She was out of control, and before Perez realized it, she had maxed out his cards and put him in debt to the tune of $42,000. She also forged his name on checks and was looking around for a way to embezzle even more money.
Within two hours one day, she withdrew $1,000 in each of five ATM transactions. Always an addictive personality, Teresa was obsessed with making a fortune at the casinos, enough that she would not need to depend on a man to survive. But at every casino, the House always has the advantage, and her chances of becoming independently wealthy through her gambling were almost nil. The judge warned her that she was in way too deep and that she had a serious problem, advising her to enter rehab to deal with it.
She didn’t listen. Although her marriage to Perez had come to the end of the road, she had a backup plan. Her husband may not have known that Teresa had been unfaithful to him for two years before they ended up in divorce court. She was seeing an older man—a much older man.
This time, her lover was forty years older than she was. And he was rich. He couldn’t marry her; he was already married and had been for decades. Still, Teresa believed that becoming his mistress would give her the status and the kind of life that would make up for everything she had missed out on. When she began with him, she didn’t know that she wasn’t his only lover. Would it have mattered to her? It’s impossible to say now. Their affairs were like a French movie, lovers in a circle with each one betraying the next.
Justyn Rosen, also known as J.R., was in his early seventies when Teresa was hired as a salesperson at one of his car dealerships. He was extremely wealthy.
As a young man, Rosen started with a used-car lot, one of thousands around Denver. He was a natural salesman, and his business thrived. He had been married to Marian Novak since they were just 18. She was beside him as he worked his way up from nothing, and they raised their two daughters together.
His father-in-law taught Justyn the automobile sales business, and Rosen honored him by using Novak’s name in his businesses long after the old man was gone.
When he was 35, Justyn bought Phil Reno Ford and soon turned it into Rosen-Novak Motors. He worked for three decades to build up Rosen-Novak Motors into the thriving Cadillac-Ford dealership it became in the nineties. He and his businesses were well known in the Denver area, and he had a staff of a hundred people, many of whom had been in his employ for three decades. He was known for his contributions to good causes and memberships in both Jewish organizations and businessmen’s clubs. A number of people saw him as a businessman with a heart.
Although he was past retirement age when Teresa met him in 1996, Rosen was still a vibrant, youthful-acting man. He wasn’t particularly tall, and his hairline had long since receded. He looked a little like the actor Ben Gazzara. And he had what Teresa needed: money to spend on her and the maturity to be yet another surrogate father.
When Teresa went to work for Rosen-Novak, she caught her boss’s eye, even though he was already involved with another woman besides his wife, a woman he called “Angel.” With Teresa in his life, Angel was soon unceremoniously dumped.
Rosen had juggled his loyalties for a long time and had seemingly come to a place where he didn’t feel guilty about his extramarital activities as long as he was always there for his wife and his family. “Angel,” however, recalls him with bitterness, still hurt and resentful that he was cheating not only on his wife but on her while he grew increasingly attracted to Teresa Perez.
“There should be a whole book written about him,” Angel wrote in an email. “The way he treated me—and others. I was with him for a long time before he started up with Teresa.”
In the beginning, Rosen and Teresa Perez confined their friendship to an occasional coffee break and then to having lunch together. There was such a discrepancy in their ages that no one took their relationship seriously. But Teresa apparently fell in love with J.R. and demanded more and more of his time. She told her foster mother that he had taken her to Arizona with him for a convention and to one of his vacation homes for her birthday. His grown daughters disputed that later, saying that their father hadn’t left the state without taking his wife along for at least seventeen years. They said he was home for dinner every night.
Perhaps. More likely, no one can keep track of adults without hiring a private detective to trail them, and Rosen’s family had no reason to do that. He had always been discreet, and he gave the women in his life cash so there would be no paper trail to follow.
Teresa’s emotions and maturity seemed to be frozen as she experienced them in her teenage years, like insects trapped in amber. She had no education and no life experience beyond scrambling for money to live. She had never really grown up and was both histrionic and full of impossible dreams. She ignored the reality of Justyn’s marriage, refusing to even ponder the warning sign when he stayed with his wife for their golden wedding anniversary and well beyond.
“She was sure he was the one for her,” her foster mother said sadly. “They were going to walk the beaches and into the sunset.”
Teresa was more convinced of that when Rosen offered to get her a really nice apartment, pay her rent, and give her money for groceries and other necessities. Although he wouldn’t be able to move in with her, he would visit her. He did have one proviso. Her daughter, Lori, who was 14, would have to move out. He told Teresa he wouldn’t feel comfortable having the teenager around when he called on her mother.
Most mothers would have balked at this request, but keeping Justyn Rosen in her life was of the ultimate importance to Teresa. She had continued to stay in touch with Bob Costello. He knew about Teresa’s life since they’d parted and was devoted to his daughter. Now Teresa called him to tell him that Lori would have to live with him and his wife. He agreed.
And so Teresa had mov
ed into a lovely apartment on Louisiana Street. Her stay there may have been the longest she had ever lived in a home of her own. Despite her hardscrabble life, she had good taste, and she wanted expensive furniture and paintings.
It was ironic that for the moment having a home meant more than having her daughter. Teresa herself had been abandoned; now, as much as she loved Lori, she abandoned her, choosing to be with Justyn no matter what the cost. She may have reasoned that once she married her wealthy benefactor she would be in a financial position to take better care of Lori.
Or maybe Teresa didn’t reason at all. Her mind flitted from one thing to another. She was no longer working as a car saleswoman. In some IQ tests she took over the years of child custody suits, she hadn’t scored very high, but there was too much cleverness in her to downplay her native intelligence.
Now she no longer had to work if she agreed to Justyn Rosen’s terms for his support. She told herself that this was just an interim thing. Teresa wanted to live in a big house the way he and his wife did. She wanted to be taken care of for the rest of her life.
At 14, Lori detested J.R. If it weren’t for him, she would still be living with her mother, and it was natural that she resented him.
Being his mistress worked for a while, and Teresa was placated by the easy life she was living. It wasn’t as if she were with Justyn just for the money, either. She really believed that she loved him with all her heart. As long as she had hope for their future, she could be sweet and accommodating. She still wanted to marry him. But as the century turned and nothing changed, and she saw Justyn grow older and older, she began to doubt him.
It was as if her daddy was leaving her again, abandoning her no matter how much she loved and needed him. The tighter Teresa clung to Justyn, the more uncomfortable he became. He had seen her temper now and how venomous she could be in an argument. Her beauty wasn’t enough to make up for the ugliness she exhibited when she was angry.
As the seasons changed and coolness crept into Colorado in September 2003, there was a sense of finality in Teresa Perez and Justyn Rosen’s relationship. He was 79 and quite probably suffering from cancer. No longer the virile, vigorous man he was seven years before when he was entranced with Teresa’s beauty and facade of charm, he wanted only to be free of her. She would not let him go. She threatened to commit suicide or expose their relationship to his wife and family.
Teresa was just as frightened as Justyn was. What would she do without him? She was forty. She had a lot of things; her apartment was lavish and furnished impeccably. She had always kept it clean; she’d seen enough clutter and dirty houses when she was a foster child. And she wanted it to be perfect when her lover dropped by. But he didn’t come over anymore, and she realized that she really had nothing. On her own she couldn’t pay the $800 a month rent, and she had no particular skills.
She had already played one of her top cards: she sent a letter to Justyn’s wife, thinking that would end his marriage. But it didn’t. After sixty years, his wife was not going to let him go.
In the summer of 2003, Teresa warned him that she was prepared to do more. She had pictures and places and dates that she intended to send to his daughters and to other members of his family and his friends. If he tried to leave her, she would send them and reveal his secrets to the community where he was used to being revered and respected.
Her threats were those of a woman who lived in her own world, who was delusional and desperate. At his wits’end, Rosen contacted a lawyer to see if he could obtain a restraining order that would shut Teresa out of his life. He said that she was stalking him. She left terrible messages on his answering machine, and wherever he drove, he felt that she was following him.
Craig Silverman, the lawyer retained by Justyn Rosen, sent Teresa a registered letter on September 15. It contained a stern warning. He told her that she had to stop calling or writing Justyn or his family. Having checked her background, he included a reference to her arrest ten years before for having used a credit card not her own and piling up charges before the owner realized what she was doing. Silverman submitted that her stalking Rosen was a case of Abuse of the Elderly. The letter had a chastising tone that angered Teresa, and it carried a warning: “Mr. Rosen is nearly eighty years old and your days of bothering him are now over.”
He was wrong.
The letter from Justyn’s attorney was a slap in the face to a woman who was unable to understand that her own actions had caused it. Teresa was in so much pain and anxiety that she lost what little ability she had to empathize with anyone else. When she was cornered, she had always been able to ferret out her opponent’s weakness and would play on it. She knew that the man who had forsaken her was extremely committed to his religion. Being Jewish was important to Rosen. She now made fun of his religion, denigrating it, telling him that he was supposed to suffer as all Jewish people were because they were “bad.”
When she told Bob Costello that she didn’t understand why that upset Justyn so much, he tried to explain to her that she had gone too far; that having been born after World War II, she obviously didn’t understand what Hitler’s regime had done to the Jews.
“She asked me if I would have left her over that,” Costello recalled, “and I told her yes.”
Teresa’s world revolved around herself; it always had. She was narcissistic and antisocial, so stunted emotionally from her childhood of abandonment that she constantly saw herself as a victim.
As always, Teresa called the people who had been there for her, even when she was exasperating. She talked to her foster mother in Ohio, sobbing over the phone that Justyn didn’t want her anymore. Patricia agreed to call him and ask him why he was leaving Teresa. When she did, he explained that Teresa had become too controlling. He told the Ohio woman not to call him again. It was over.
Still, Teresa followed Justyn. She was even more beautiful than when he first met her, and most men would have been pleased to have such a statuesque woman walking just behind them, if they were unaware of her obsessive tenacity. But she was unhinged. Costello had suggested that if she felt she must confront Rosen, she should hire an attorney and confront him that way. She said she might consider that; she could sue him for palimony.
On October 2, Justyn Rosen, through his lawyer, Craig Silverman, filed a sworn affidavit asking for a restraining order that would stipulate that Teresa Perez must keep at least a hundred yards away from Rosen at all times. It was not unlike the requests that thousands of females who are victims of domestic violence ask for. Even if they obtain these orders, they are basically only pieces of paper that have proven to have little impact on jealous or deranged stalkers. But it would at least provide a reason for the police to arrest Teresa if she violated the restraining order.
It was probably humiliating for the old man who had a good reputation in Denver to admit that he was being emotionally blackmailed, and he must have worried that it would cause gossip, but he had few options.
“While I initially welcomed Ms. Perez’s company,” the statement read, “I have many times recently sought to end my relationship with her. In response, Ms. Perez has consistently demanded money from me to support herself and she is unwilling to let me terminate our relationship.”
Although he did not describe the details of his relationship with Teresa, he noted that she had sent a letter to his wife. “She has recently made clear to me her willingness to deliver similar packages of information to my children and other people I care about.
“I made the mistake of giving her money in the past, and now she feels she is entitled to more money. She is not.”
He was an old man who was receiving treatment for cancer, still wealthy but not the powerhouse he had once been. His hands were gnarled, and he wore a classic Burberry cap to cover his bald pate. It was easy to feel sorry for him and for his wife, who was also 78 or 79. Even so, his chickens had come home to roost, and he had chosen the wrong woman for his last hurrah as a man with a beautiful young mistress. r />
His statement revealed that he was afraid. He had come to dread Teresa’s messages on his voice mail and the constant glimpses of her in his rearview mirror or in the city so close to him. How did she always know where he was?
“Teresa Perez represents a threat to my mental and physical health,” Justyn Rosen stressed, citing his age and his illness. “I feel as if Teresa Perez has long been manipulating and taking advantage of me. I need it to end now.”
Judge Kathleen Bowers granted a temporary order prohibiting Teresa from getting within a hundred yards of the Rosen home in the Hilltop neighborhood or of his car dealerships. Another hearing was set for October 16.
Process servers attempted to reach Teresa at her apartment, but she hid behind her locked doors, crying. In hysterical tears, she called her former foster mother.
She was panicked and heartbroken. She was also angry and desperate.
2
Shortly before six PM on Friday, October 3, Captain Joseph Padilla was on duty as the head of the Denver Police Department’s Gang Bureau at 2205 Colorado Boulevard in the center of Denver. The Gang Bureau was housed in an old firehouse located on the western edge of the city’s sprawling City Park, just northeast of the Denver Museum of Natural History. The park was lush and green and boasted two lakes: Duck Lake and the much larger City Park Lake. The onetime firehouse was also close to Saint Joseph’s Hospital, the Presbyterian Saint Luke’s Medical Center and the National Jewish Medical and Research Center.
Padilla, a big man with a thick mustache, had twenty-five years of experience as a cop, nineteen of them with the Denver Police Department. He’d been in some tough scrapes before, two where he had to fire his gun. He hoped never to have to do that again. This Friday evening was quiet. It was shift change at six, and red-haired Officer Randy Yoder left the gang unit to walk to his black Ford F-250 pickup truck, where he’d parked it hours earlier in one of the lots near the police building.