CHARGE / MURDER, SON KILLED PARENTS, POLICE SAY

Middletown, N.Y.-The 23-year-old son of prosperous Great Neck lawyers
murdered his parents in their mountainside retreat in Woodstock and returned
four days later to set their corpses ablaze to cover his tracks, State
Police said Friday.

In a crime that has shocked the quiet Catskills community, Adam Roberts, was
arrested on Long Island Friday and brought upstate to face charges that he
killed his parents on Nov. 13, State Police said at a news conference here.
The charred remains of Seth Roberts, 51, and his wife, Ronna, 50, were found
in the home in Woodstock after it burned on Nov. 17.

"It's a horrific crime," said State Police Maj. Alan Martin, whose Troop F
oversees five rural counties. "The idea of killing your parents is just
unthinkable. And then burning the bodies to cover up the crime. It kind of
speaks for itself." At Roberts' arraignment in Woodstock Town Justice Court,
Judge Richard Husted said Ulster County District Attorney Donald Williams
had told him earlier there is a "reasonable likelihood" this could be a
death penalty case.

Roberts, wearing off-white parachute pants, a white long-sleeve shirt and
brown Sketcher boots, pleaded not guilty to two counts of second-degree
murder. He was ordered held without bail at the Ulster County Jail.

"He's tremendously upset by all of this," his lawyer, Howard Weiswasser of
Manhattan, said. "It's a nightmare to lose your parents and to be considered
a suspect in their murder." Investigators said they had not determined a
motive for the crime and that they were exploring various theories. Police
sources have said there was friction between Roberts and his parents because
of his heroin addiction. But they stopped short of drawing a direct link to
the crime.

In fact, investigators said that, at this point, they can't say whether the
killing was premeditated. "We do believe that the arson was premeditated,"
said Capt. John Melville, who heads the Bureau of Criminal Investigations
for State Police Troop F.

In court, Weiswasser told the judge that Roberts is on methadone, a common
treatment for heroin addicts, and asked that his client receive appropriate
medical treatment in jail. He also requested that Roberts be placed in
protective custody and on suicide watch, both of which the judge granted.

Police questioned Roberts, who lived with his parents in Great Neck, the day
after the fire. But they held off on an arrest after he checked himself into
North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset. "We were still building a case
and we knew where he was, and if he had left, we would have arrested him,"
Martin said.

Roberts was treated for an arm infection, Weiswasser said, but he would not
say whether it was drug needle-related. Roberts was given antibiotics
intravenously at first and then orally, the lawyer said. Roberts was
scheduled to be transferred to a North Shore Hospital drug treatment
division in Syosset Friday.

But as Roberts left the hospital in Manhasset about 12:45 p.m., he was
picked up by state police.

His family, which is sitting shiva for his parents at their home in Great
Neck, issued a three-paragraph statement Friday afternoon. Lewis Fidler,
Ronna Roberts' brother and her husband's law partner, read the statement to
reporters at the end of the driveway.

"Regarding the arrest of Adam, we are all of one mind," the statement read
in part. "We will stand beside him. We will assist in his defense to any
extent possible.

"As facts come to light, perhaps we will achieve a greater understanding of
how such a tragedy could happen to such good people. We urge all to
distinguish between facts and speculation, not to believe everything that is
reported in the papers and on TV." According to police, Roberts and his
parents drove from Great Neck to the Woodstock home on Nov. 11. Two days
later, he allegedly killed them. A knife was found between the remains of
their bodies, but investigators have not yet been able to determine the
cause of death.

Police said that after killing his mother and father, Roberts drove to New
York City. Police sources said he met up with his girlfriend, whom
Weiswasser identified as Wendy Auerbach, a student at the School of Visual
Arts in Manhattan.

Initially, Roberts told Auerbach that his parents had gone away for several
months, according to police.

But sometime during the next few days, he confessed his crime to her, the
sources said. He returned to Woodstock on the morning of Nov. 17 and set the
fire, which eventually gutted much of the home, according to police. "He
went back to Woodstock and set fire to the bodies in an attempt to cover up
the crime," Martin said.

Then, the same evening, Roberts drove to Brooklyn in his parents' Ford
Explorer. An acquaintance, Eddie Evangelista, 27, said he met Roberts, who
gave him the keys to the vehicle, explaining that his parents were away and
that Evangelista could use it.

But New York City police, alerted to the missing vehicle, soon located it
through a tracking device. They arrested Evangelista and two other men who
were with him.

Evangelista later said investigators showed him a photo of Adam Roberts, and
he identified Roberts as the man who gave him the Explorer. Evangelista had
been charged with criminal possession of stolen property, but the charges
were dropped.

Earlier, while Roberts was a student at Syracuse University, he was arrested
on April 25, 1998, and charged with breaking into another student apartment
in search of drugs, according to a local press report.

Roberts and two other students, wearing ski masks and carrying baseball
bats, entered the apartment and tied up Theodore Ely, the only roommate who
was home at the time, police said at the time.

"All we want is the drugs," one of the intruders said as they ransacked the
apartment, Ely said. Now a senior at Syracuse, Ely said one of his roommates
sold marijuana, and the intruders wanted to steal his supply.

Weiswasser said Friday night the prosecutors had recently dropped the
charges against Roberts in the Syracuse case. Roberts, who was a senior in
the school of management at the time, left the university on a mutually
agreed upon leave of absence, said university spokesman Kevin Morrow. He has
not re-enrolled since.

Roberts is a 1994 graduate of Great Neck High School, where classmates
described him as an average student academically, but very artistic and
creative. He started college at Clark University in Massachusetts. He told
high school acquaintances that he left Clark because he had been mugged and
didn't want to return afterward. He transferred to Syracuse in the spring of
1996.

Recently, he had been working at a shipping company in Manhattan, according
to a high school friend who requested anonymity. But Martin said Roberts had
been fired from his job on the Monday after his parents' deaths.

Roberts has been dating Auerbach for about 2 1/2 years, Weiswasser said.

Auerbach, who is from Dix Hills, met Roberts when she was a freshman at
Syracuse. She transferred to the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan in May.

Seth Roberts was an immigration lawyer who worked in Manhattan. His wife
also was a lawyer, but she stopped working a few years ago to concentrate on
her hobbies and on the construction of the home in Woodstock. They were
county Democratic committee members who had lived in Great Neck for about 20
years.