John Jefferson
Insets: Elizabeth Mascarelli and fugitive Maxwell Johnson (Ocean County Jail/Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office). Background: The home of Kelly Rollason in Toms River, New Jersey (WPVI/YouTube).
A New Jersey woman is heading to prison for shacking up with a wanted murderer and conspiring with him to kill and dismember a homeowner who was letting them stay at his residence — where they consumed and dealt drugs together — in what prosecutors call “a plot of a horror movie.”
Elizabeth Mascarelli, 29, of Seaside Heights, was sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison for the July 2024 shooting death of 56-year-old Kelly Rollason, according to the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office. She pleaded guilty in December to aggravated manslaughter.
Rollason, of Toms River, was letting Mascarelli and three others — including fugitive Maxwell Johnson, who would later die by suicide during a police standoff — stay at his home.
Mascarelli, a mother of a 5-year-old, was originally charged with murder for the slaying, which she committed after conspiring with Johnson, according to prosecutors. After killing Rollason, Mascarelli and the others in the home dismembered his body and dumped the body parts in Jackson, which is about 20 miles north of the quiet town of Toms River.
“Frankly, the facts are the plot of a horror movie,” Ocean County Assistant Prosecutor Julie Peterson said at Mascarelli’s sentencing, according to the Asbury Park Press. “One has to suspend themselves from reality to accept that something so gruesome, so horrific, inhumane, could happen right here in Toms River, in Ocean County, New Jersey.”
During the investigation, Mascarelli told cops that Johnson was pulling her strings and threatening to kill Rollason, which she originally claimed he did. Mascarelli said the wanted murderer, who previously killed his ex-girlfriend, was terrorizing everyone in the house and “by all accounts, carried a firearm at all times, brandishing it often,” according to Mascarelli’s lawyer, Glenn Kassman, who spoke at her sentencing.
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Johnson was “suspicious and paranoid of everyone and everything,” Kassman said, even attacking pillows with knives at times. He and Mascarelli both consumed and dealt drugs while living together and were caught on video engaging in sexual acts, according to prosecutors.
“Licking and kissing the gun that he was using to open fire,” Peterson said.
After killing Rollason, Mascarelli took photos of his body as “a memory of something she seems to be proud of,” according to Peterson. She also let his body sit in the basement while she, Johnson and the other housemates — Jared Krysiak, Jared Palumbo and Danielle Bolstad — went to get McDonald’s before returning to dismember him.
“Her character is demonstrated by choosing to harbor an individual who was known to be wanted for murder, by choosing to shoot Kelly Rollason, the person who was allowing her to stay in the house, and then leave his body on the basement floor to take a break and grab a quick bite to eat at McDonald’s with her codefendants, and come back and mutilate his body like an animal carcass at the butcher,” Peterson said.
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Krysiak, 34, Palumbo, 36, and Bolstad, 42, have all pleaded guilty and are currently awaiting sentencing. Johnson died by suicide as cops attempted to take him into custody for the murder of his girlfriend. Authorities didn’t find out about Rollason’s death until six days later upon further investigation, the Asbury Park Press reports.
The judge overseeing Mascarelli’s case ordered her to serve at least 85% of her prison term before being eligible for release on parole. She will be on parole supervision for five years after that as part of her plea deal.
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