‘I don’t know why they’re not talking.’ People know who killed Charline Rosemond. They’re not cooperating with police. (2024)

In the spring of 2009, Charline Rosemond had a lot to look forward to. The 23-year-old was getting ready to move out of her family’s home in Everett and into her own apartment. She was going to be a bridesmaid in her older sister’s wedding. She was shopping around to buy a car.

One morning that April, she borrowed her father’s car to go to work. She told her family that her friend knew someone who was selling their Lexus, and she planned to check the car out after work. She had $4,000 in cash on her, in case she decided to buy it. After she finished work, she spoke to her mother on the phone and said she would be coming home soon.

“She said, I’ll be home around 6 or 7 o’clock,” her sister, Roserlie Rosemond, recalled in a recent interview. It wasn’t until the next morning when Roserlie was woken up by her mother that she learned that her sister had not come home. It wasn’t like her to stay out all night.

When her family learned Rosemond hadn’t shown up at her job at a car dealership in Brighton that morning, they knew something was very wrong.

“Charline did not play about missing work,” Roserlie said.

Her family contacted the police and reported her missing.Almost a week later, she was found dead in Somerville, her body slumped over in the driver’s seat of her father’s gray 2001 Honda Civic, which was parked behind a five-story apartment building in Union Square. She had been shot in the head.

The parking lot where she was found was “super tiny and secluded,” Roserlie said. “Unfortunately a spot well hidden.”

Rosemond was no stranger to Somerville. She spent some of her formative years there and graduated from Somerville High School in 2004. She had plenty of friends who still lived there.

Roserlie said her sister believed the Lexus was worth $6,000 and was excited she had a chance to buy it for $4,000.

“She figured, ‘if I like it, I’ll buy it immediately,’” Roserlie said. “She was very happy.”

When her body was found, the $4,000 she was carrying in her purse was gone.

In a statement, the Middlesex District Attorney’s office said investigators believe she “was set up, robbed, and killed all because she wanted to purchase a car.”

But to this day, no one has been arrested for her murder.

“I am 100 percent sure” there are people who know what happened, Roserlie said. “I don’t know why they’re not talking.”

Roserlie believes a third person must have been in the car with her sister, because the shooter was in the backseat.

“I think there was more than one player,” she said. “She was shot from the back. There had to be someone in the passenger seat.”

In May 2009, theSomerville Timesreported that a 21-year-old Somerville man named Dokens Joseph had been arrested and charged with two counts of perjury in connection with Rosemond’s murder, after he allegedly lied to a grand jury investigating her death.

“We allege that this defendant has useful information regarding our investigation into the murder of Charline Rosemond yet chose to knowingly provide false information under oath,” Gerry Leone, the Middlesex district attorney, said at the time. “We will continue to prosecute those who willfully choose to lie under oath or obstruct our investigation into this homicide.”

Joseph was ordered held on $100,000 cash bail, according to the Times. But his arrest never led to a break in Rosemond’s murder.

The Middlesex District Attorney’s office declined to comment on the investigation.

Less than a year after her murder, someone posted about Rosemond’s killing on a popular online chat forum.

Thepostappeared onlipstickalley.comon Feb. 16, 2010. Written by an anonymous user, the title read: “Should I SNITCH or mind my own business?”

The writer was looking for advice because they had heard that Rosemond’s alleged killer was someone they knew and had gone to school with.

“Allegedly it was someone I went to elementary school with, someone who I kind of grew up with,” the post stated. “I even went to the same H.S. as him in freshmen year. I’ll call him *Person A. Anyway, I was shocked to hear it could be that person, but at the same time I wasn’t. In school, Person A wasn’t anyone you would think would go far in life. He never took school seriously; he would always be sleeping in class or get in mischief.”

The anonymous author said they wanted to tell the police what they knew but was hesitant.

“At the same time, I don’t want to be put into this situation,” the person wrote. “So, should I just mind my own business? It’s not as if I saw anything, but the fact that streets are talking must mean they ain’t lying, because locals always know what’s really up in their neighborhood. Any advice?”

The post received several responses, with many encouraging the writer to pass the information along to police as an anonymous tip. But the person who wrote the post was not swayed.

“Y’all scared me now,” the user wrote. “I am keeping my mouth quiet. I guess I felt like like it could be the right thing to do. But the police probably knows who did it, and if they don’t, oh well, someone else can tell.”

The silence surrounding Rosemond’s death has been excruciating for her family. Fifteen years later, they’re still waiting for answers and holding onto hope that justice will be served.

For now, all they have are memories.

Roserlie remembers the last time she saw her sister. She was watching “America’s Top Model” at her family’s home in Everett.

“That was the last I saw her, at home in the living room,” Roserlie said.

Roserlie continues to spread the word about her sister’s murder, which has been featured on Anngelle Wood’s “Crime of the Truest Kind” podcast and other shows. She worries that the more time goes by, the harder it will be to solve the case.

“My parents are getting older. The fact that we’re 15 years in and no one has been arrested is something that has tormented my family,” she said. “It’s mind-boggling it’s gone on this long.”

Anyone with information about Charline Rosemond’s murder is urged to call the State Police assigned to the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office at 781-897-6600.

Sign up for the Cold Case Files newsletter.

Emily Sweeney can be reached at[emailprotected]. Follow her@emilysweeneyand on Instagram@emilysweeney22.