Rosie Essa jumped into her SUV and drove down the streets of Gates Mills, Ohio, hoping to catch a last-minute movie with her sister.
Rosie, a nurse married to a prominent emergency room doctor, seemed to have it all: financial security, a huge family home, two beautiful children, and plans for a third.
But Rosie was never going to the movies that day.
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Dateline: Secrets Uncovered “Bitter Pill” Release Date
Rosemarie Essa’s story will be explored in detail on the Dateline: Secrets Uncovered episode titled ‘Bitter Pill’. It will air on OXYGEN 79 on January 17, 2023 at 8:00 p.m.
On February 24, 2005, while driving to a movie theater, she passed out behind the wheel and collided with a moving van. After that, she was rushed to the hospital, where she subsequently passed away. Her spouse was the first person to be implicated in her death.
After being questioned by the authorities, her husband Yazeed Essa fled the country, first to Cyprus and subsequently to Lebanon.
On October 7, 2006, he was arrested in Cyprus and deported to the United States, where he was sentenced to life in prison.
Rosemarie Essa: Who Was She?
Rosemarie DiPuccio was born to Rocco and Gee Gee DiPuccio on October 21, 1966. In 1995, she started working as a nurse at the now-defunct Mount Sinai Hospital, when she met Yazeed Essa, an ER doctor and businessman.
He was seeing Alexandra Herrera at the time, whom he later dumped for DiPuccio. On September 11, 1999, they married.
A year later, their son Armand was born, followed by a daughter, Lena, two years later. Rosemarie was hailed as an incredibly caring mother by her relatives, and the pair appeared to be content and planned for a third child.
Rosemarie Essa Murder Case Details
- Yazeed Essa was a successful young doctor when he met and married Rosemarie “Rosie” DiPuccio, a nurse. They still seemed like an ideal pair six years and two children later.
- Rosemarie Essa, 38, left her two children with their father on that February day in 2005, intending to spend the afternoon with her sister.
- On Wilson Mills Road in Highland Heights, she lost control of her SUV and collided with an oncoming vehicle.
- The crash caused no significant injuries, although she was in critical condition.
- When she was taken to Hillcrest Hospital, she told doctors that her husband had given her calcium pills that may have caused her to become ill. She went into a coma and never came out of it.
- Her death prompted an investigation by police and the coroner’s office. The calcium capsules had been laced with cyanide, according to tests. When authorities went to arrest her spouse, they discovered he had fled the country.
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Rosemarie Essa Murder Case Investigation
When Essa’s brother, Dominic DiPuccio, called McGregor to inform her of Essa’s death, she told him about Essa’s call and her concerns about the medication. McGregor assumed Essa’s husband tampered with the pills and confronted him at the burial.
McGregor later notified a colleague nurse, Christine DiCillo, who called the cops, who had already launched an investigation into Essa’s death as suspicious.
Relatives also reported that Yazeed was acting oddly after his wife died. Instead of accepting family help, he hired two nannies, Marguerita Montenaz and Michele Madeline.
Detective Gary McKee, one of the case’s investigators, eventually determined that Yazeed was having an affair with both women.
If you’re looking for a unique way to express yourself, this is the place to be. Yazeed stated why he had provided calcium pills to Essa, stating, “I was at my mother’s place two weeks ago, and I was thinking about this as well. My mother had this older woman around, and they were discussing osteoporosis and such. And I’d been informed that because Rosie was there, we should definitely start taking calcium pills because she’s over 35.”
McKee asked for the drugs, and Yazeed obliged. Yazeed planned a going-away party that day before calling his sister Runa at 4 a.m. to ask if she could watch the kids, alleging that a friend out-of-state had been in an accident. Then, Yazeed vanished.
Four weeks after Essa’s death, a toxicology analysis revealed that the calcium pills she was given contained potassium cyanide, validating police and the DiPuccios’ suspicions.
The local cops then contacted the FBI, who assigned Phil Torsney to find Yazeed.
Rosemarie Essa: Why Her Husband Murdered Her?
Rosemarie Essa’s family was initially taken aback by the loss of their young and healthy daughter and suspected nothing nefarious.
However, it wasn’t until one of her closest friends, Eva McGregor, made contact with Rosie’s brother, Dominic DiPuccio, that the family realized something was wrong.
Rosie was driving to see a last-minute movie with her sister, Deanna, on that fateful afternoon in February 2005, when she began to feel ill behind the wheel.
According to Eva, Rosie contacted her to say she wasn’t feeling well and felt her husband, Yaz, was to blame. “She (Eva) proceeded to tell me that Rosie was talking to her on her way to the movie, and she said Yaz had given her a calcium pill before she left the house, and she began to feel nauseated,” Dominic explained.
Rosie had intended to call and confront Yaz, but she lost control of the car before she could do so, according to Eva.
Eva told the story to Rosie’s other brother, Rocky, as well, and Dominic, a lawyer by trade, was wary. They agreed to contact the coroner and ask for a more detailed report on their sister’s death.
But Eva had discussed her concerns with her neighbor, Christine DiCillo, who worked with Rosie and Yaz at the hospital. She reported the incident to the Highland Heights police department, and Yaz was questioned on March 17, 2005.
Yaz was chilly during the interview, implying that he made Rosie take the calcium pills after overhearing his mother discussing osteoporosis. He even took officers to his home and handed over the bottle of calcium pills and other prescription that his wife consumed.
Yaz hosted a party that night and contacted Deanna about 4 a.m. to watch his kids for the weekend. He claimed that he needed to go to North Carolina to help a close friend’s brother who had been in an accident.
Yaz’s bottle of calcium pills was found to be poisoned with cyanide when police tested it. Yaz, on the other hand, had departed the nation by then, eventually finding his way to Beruit, Lebanon, and adopting the moniker Maurice Khalife.
Because the United States and Lebanon did not have an extradition treaty, Yaz was practically untouchable by American authorities.
Rosemarie Essa: Current Location
Yaz lived a wealthy and glamorous life in Lebanon for 17 months as the FBI waited for him to make a mistake. According to the show, the fugitive doctor had become overconfident by this point, and he publicly boasted about murdering his wife and eluding American law enforcement officers.
Yaz boarded a plane to Cyprus under a false identity on October 7, 2006, but was apprehended by officials who were waiting for him. The FBI had knowledge about this travel and contacted the Cyprus authorities before Yaz’s plane landed.
Cyprus and the United States had an extradition pact, although it no longer applied to cases involving the death sentence. Yaz’s lawyers opposed the extradition vehemently, and American law enforcement officials had to emphasize that the death penalty was not involved before they were finally able to extradite him to Cleveland three years later, in early January 2009.
His trial began in January 2010, when jurors found that Yaz was a philanderer who had been accused of theft and record tampering, and who had even had his license suspended and reinstated on probation.
Eva also testified that Yaz supposedly gave Rosie herpes, and other witnesses remarked on how carefree and casual he appeared after his wife died, cracking jokes and throwing parties.
Yaz was convicted of aggravated murder in March 2010 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 20 years.
The Ohio Supreme Court refused his appeal in November 2011, while he was completing his sentence at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown. According to his inmate records, his first parole hearing will not be held until November 2028.
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