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 stated 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 digicam, 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 might 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 everywhere in the ground, the aspect of the mattress,” Cicio defined.
Cicio stated 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 help, 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,” stated 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 means of his nonetheless bloody home and clarify how the taking pictures occurred. With a trooper videotaping him, Bruno Rocuba sat on a mattress stained together with his spouse’s blood and used a toy gun to display how he says he by chance shot her.
Bruno Rocuba stated 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 might put it away, Bruno Rocuba informed investigators. “My spouse was sitting on the mattress on that aspect. I used to be on this aspect,” he continued. “And I pulled the set off by chance.”
Sabrina Rocuba says her father’s story was very plausible given the harm to his hand. “We thought, like … effectively, who was gonna – who’s gonna shoot themselves?” she stated.
Melissa Rocuba was in intensive care for 3 days when her household made the heart-wrenching determination to take her off life help. The following day, on Aug. 10, 2013, she was pronounced useless.
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 stored wanting to ensure he was OK,” stated Cicio.
Cicio stated she was apprehensive that her father could be arrested, so she advisable that he rent a prime native legal professional named Joe D’Andrea. However D’Andrea says he did not need to do a lot to maintain Bruno Rocuba out of jail. The Lackawanna County District Legal professional’s Workplace, he stated, 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 a criminal offense,” stated 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 in regards to the taking pictures and occasions that adopted.
For starters, stated Swinney, Bruno Rocuba spent little or no time by his spouse’s aspect as she lay dying. “He would come there, perhaps keep like an hour … after which go away,” she stated.
Whereas their mom was nonetheless on life help, Melissa Rocuba’s daughters stated their father requested them to scrub his bloody home and do away with the mattress on which their mom had been shot.
“He is like … I can not go dwelling 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 can not imagine he requested us to try this.”
Melissa Rocuba’s daughters stated that even earlier than their mom was buried, their father requested for assist eliminating her belongings.
“He needed us to do away with the whole lot,” Cicio informed Inexperienced. “It is like he needed her erased.”
Melissa Rocuba/Fb
Sabrina Rocuba stated 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 stated she was shocked when she noticed that Bruno Rocuba had even eliminated all images of his spouse. “Bruno stated he could not have a look at them … he was grieving, he could not have a look at them,” stated Swinney. She stated 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, stated Cicio, was that inside months of her mom’s loss of life, her father started courting a lady named Tonia Wilczewski. “I bear in mind looking my window and he or she was cooking Christmas dinner in my mother’s kitchen. I wasn’t invited,” she stated.
Swinney started to marvel if her sister’s husband had been having an affair with Wilczewski previous to the taking pictures. Swinney stated that not lengthy after her sister’s loss of life, Melissa Rocuba’s greatest good friend obtained a name from Bruno Rocuba to ask her, “How lengthy do you suppose it’s earlier than, you realize, you might type of like go public with courting somebody?” And he or she stated, “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 stated they did not have sufficient proof that her taking pictures was intentional, in order that they had been pressured to just accept the district legal professional’s determination 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 circumstances, 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 stated, “No, we had been combating.” Then he nervously modified his story and stated that he had been “enjoying with the gun” and by chance “let it go off.”
Rocuba then denied any argument and adjusted his story a 3rd time. He stated 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 stated 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,” stated 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 dwelling 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 capable of … hear … their final dialog collectively,” says Nilon. “After which a gunshot goes off.”
“It could very effectively be your sister’s personal voice that finally put him behind bars,” Inexperienced commented to Swinney.
“I by no means actually considered it like that. Yeah,” Swinney replied.
On June 3, 2022, almost 9 years after Melissa Rocuba’s loss of life, 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 can be up for parole beginning in 2035.
