On a summer season’s night time in August 2013, 22-year-old Chelsea Cicio acquired an alarming name from her father, Bruno Rocuba. He mentioned there had been a horrible accident and her mom, Melissa Rocuba, had been injured.
Cicio, who lived subsequent door to her mother and father in Simpson, Pennsylvania, was captured on a house safety digital camera, frantically racing to see what had occurred. She could be heard screaming, “Mommy, Mommy” as she enters the home and finds her mom has been shot within the head.
“Quickly as I walked in, you would see proper right here … she was laying on the mattress,” Cicio informed “48 Hours” correspondent Anne-Marie Inexperienced as they revisited the scene for “Melissa Rocuba’s Closing Moments,” now streaming on Paramount+.
“The blood was simply all around the ground, the facet of the mattress,” Cicio defined.
Cicio mentioned her father would later inform her that he had been sitting on the mattress cleansing his gun, when her mom sat down and it by chance went off. With one bullet, Bruno Rocuba had shot himself within the left hand and his spouse within the head.
Melissa Rocuba was airlifted to the hospital and positioned on life assist, as household raced to her bedside. Bruno Rocuba was taken to a unique hospital, the place he had surgical procedure on his hand. “Everybody felt horrible for him,” mentioned Cicio’s older sister, Sabrina Rocuba. “That is his spouse of 25 years.”
The day after the taking pictures, Bruno Rocuba agreed to stroll a number of Pennsylvania State troopers by way of his nonetheless bloody home and clarify how the taking pictures occurred. With a trooper videotaping him, Bruno Rocuba sat on a mattress stained along with his spouse’s blood and used a toy gun to show how he says he by chance shot her.
Bruno Rocuba mentioned his .40 caliber pistol was on the nightstand by their mattress as a result of there had been a number of robberies within the neighborhood. “I reached over. I grabbed it,” so he may put it away, Bruno Rocuba informed investigators. “My spouse was sitting on the mattress on that facet. I used to be on this facet,” he continued. “And I pulled the set off by chance.”
Sabrina Rocuba says her father’s story was very plausible given the damage to his hand. “We thought, like … properly, who was gonna – who’s gonna shoot themselves?” she mentioned.
Melissa Rocuba was in intensive care for 3 days when her household made the heart-wrenching choice to take her off life assist. The following day, on Aug. 10, 2013, she was pronounced lifeless.
The couple’s daughters had been devastated by the loss, however within the days that adopted, they had been so apprehensive about their father that their focus was on comforting him. “I saved wanting to verify he was OK,” mentioned Cicio.
Cicio mentioned she was apprehensive that her father is likely to be arrested, so she really helpful that he rent a high native lawyer named Joe D’Andrea. However D’Andrea says he did not must do a lot to maintain Bruno Rocuba out of jail. The Lackawanna County District Legal professional’s Workplace, he mentioned, did not have sufficient proof to cost Bruno Rocuba with homicide, in order that they did not cost him in any respect.
“Not each taking pictures is against the law,” mentioned D’Andrea. “He by no means wavered from his story … that it was an accident.”
However as time glided by, Melissa Rocuba’s daughters and her sister, Joanne Swinney, started to have second ideas concerning the taking pictures and occasions that adopted.
For starters, mentioned Swinney, Bruno Rocuba spent little or no time by his spouse’s facet as she lay dying. “He would come there, perhaps keep like an hour … after which depart,” she mentioned.
Whereas their mom was nonetheless on life assist, Melissa Rocuba’s daughters mentioned their father requested them to wash his bloody home and eliminate the mattress on which their mom had been shot.
“He is like … I am unable to go house to that … I do not wish to see all of the blood,” Cicio recalled. “And right here I’m, 21, 22. … Now as an grownup, I am like, wow, I am unable to consider he requested us to do this.”
Melissa Rocuba’s daughters mentioned that even earlier than their mom was buried, their father requested for assist eliminating her belongings.
“He needed us to eliminate every part,” Cicio informed Inexperienced. “It is like he needed her erased.”
Melissa Rocuba/Fb
Sabrina Rocuba mentioned her father even removed her mom’s beloved 10-year-old Rottweiler, Zeus. “My mother beloved that canine. And my dad removed him proper after my mother died,” she says.
Melissa Rocuba’s sister mentioned she was shocked when she noticed that Bruno Rocuba had even eliminated all images of his spouse. “Bruno mentioned he could not have a look at them … he was grieving, he could not have a look at them,” mentioned Swinney. She mentioned Bruno Rocuba additionally removed her sister’s complete wardrobe. “We needed to go all the way down to the thrift retailer the place they donated the garments … and I needed to get garments for my sister to bury her in.”
However most alarming, mentioned Cicio, was that inside months of her mom’s dying, her father started courting a girl named Tonia Wilczewski. “I bear in mind searching my window and he or she was cooking Christmas dinner in my mother’s kitchen. I wasn’t invited,” she mentioned.
Swinney started to surprise if her sister’s husband had been having an affair with Wilczewski previous to the taking pictures. Swinney mentioned that not lengthy after her sister’s dying, Melissa Rocuba’s finest buddy bought a name from Bruno Rocuba to ask her, “How lengthy do you assume it’s earlier than, you already know, you would type of like go public with courting somebody?” And she or he mentioned, “Are you freaking kidding me?”
Wilczewski declined “48 Hours'” request for an interview however despatched a textual content message that said, “There was by no means an affair.” Bruno Rocuba by no means responded to requests for an interview.
Regardless of their suspicions, Melissa Rocuba’s daughters and sister mentioned they did not have sufficient proof that her taking pictures was intentional, in order that they had been pressured to just accept the district lawyer’s choice to not cost their father.
Then, seven years after the taking pictures, in 2020, Pennsylvania State Police investigators Greg Allen and Dan Nilon had been assigned to analyze open murder instances, and this one caught their eye.
“What about this case stood out to you?” requested Inexperienced. “To me, it was the unique 911 name,” Corporal Allen defined. “On the 911 name, I hear three totally different accounts of what occurred.”
Chelsea Cicio 
Bruno Rocuba had referred to as 911 to report his spouse’s taking pictures, and when the operator requested, “Was it self-inflicted?” Rocuba mentioned, “No, we had been preventing.” Then he nervously modified his story and mentioned that he had been “enjoying with the gun” and by chance “let it go off.”
Rocuba then denied any argument and altered his story a 3rd time. He mentioned that he had been dealing with the gun as a result of he and his spouse had been “going to go taking pictures,” and that is when he by chance pulled the set off.
Investigators Allen and Nilon then watched the videotape of Rocuba’s police walkthrough and interview the day after the taking pictures, and mentioned they heard a number of extra inconsistencies in Rocuba’s clarification of the taking pictures.
“There have been so many crimson flags… that we knew he wasn’t telling the reality,” mentioned Nilon.
Corporal Nilon then did a deep dive into the case and found a key piece of proof that had been collected on the Rocuba house however by no means been examined. A house safety system that had captured footage of Melissa Rocuba’s final actions and phrases.
“We had been in a position to … hear … their final dialog collectively,” says Nilon. “After which a gunshot goes off.”
“It could very properly be your sister’s personal voice that in the end put him behind bars,” Inexperienced commented to Swinney.
“I by no means actually considered it like that. Yeah,” Swinney replied.
On June 3, 2022, practically 9 years after Melissa Rocuba’s dying, Bruno Rocuba was arrested and charged together with her homicide.
However two years later, in Could 2024, as Bruno Rocuba’s trial approached, each side agreed to a plea deal. Bruno Rocuba pleaded responsible to third-degree homicide and was sentenced to 12 to 40 years behind bars. With time served, he might be up for parole beginning in 2035.
