In December of 1993, pretty, wild, and friendly, Rose Larner disappeared. No one heard from her, no one had seen her. She was just gone. Her parents weren’t too worried at first because Rose did like to run the streets and hang out with her friends. The problem is, Rose had a serious obsession with talking on the phone. People would even have to change their numbers in order to get Rose to stop calling them so much. In December 1993, those calls stopped. Rose stopped calling. Someone as obsessed with calling people all the time, just stopped calling. Something was clearly wrong. Rose never showed up for work at the pizzeria she worked at, she also never picked up her last paycheck. Rose was always so excited to get paid that she would get up at 7 am on payday just to grab the bus to go get her check.
Rose Larner
Rose had been in a relationship with a local rapper named John Ortiz-Kehoe. Kehoe decided he wanted to end the relationship and Rose wasn’t too happy about that. Rose continued to badger Kehoe and try to get back together with him. Kehoe was having none of it and was ignoring her to the best of his ability. However, on the night she disappeared a long time friend of Rose and John stated they were all together. Billy Brown, who had been friends with Rose since middle school, claimed the three rode around together for a while before they returned to John’s grandparents house in Albion, MI. Billy Brown states that John Ortiz-Kehoe then killed Rose Larner in the shower with a knife, he states that he then cut her body up and then set her on fire in the basement. Brown states that they then cleaned up the house and took Larsen’s remains to a property in Gladwin that Billy Brown’s family owned. Brown claimed that the body was burned and that Kehoe placed part of her burned flesh between two pieces of bread, added mustard, and ate it, just for the experience of eating someone’s flesh. He claims that they then drove down the road and discarded Rose’s ashes as they drove.
However, Rose’s remains were never found on this property or anywhere else. If Brown’s story is true, wouldn’t they have found some evidence of Rose at this property? The only hint of Rose at any of these scenes was a small trace of Rose’s blood in the shower at John’s grandparents house.
On May 12, 1997, John Ortiz-Kehoe was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of first degree murder. The only evidence against him was the testimony of Billy Brown, an admitted participant in the case, as well as the small blood spot found in the shower at his grandparents house. The blood, to me, could be excluded easily. John and Rose had been in a relationship, we all know blood can easily get spilled during sex or during a menstrual cycle. How does anyone know exactly how this blood got there? And the testimony of Billy Brown? How can the jury just accept the testimony of an admitted criminal like Billy Brown?
MICHIGAN LEGENDS & FOLKLORE DOES NOT SUPPORT CREATING A CANNIBAL’S GROUNDS OF THE INNOCENCE OF JOHN ORTIZ-KEHOE MDOC 256263 BUT SUPPORTS BILLY BROWN’S GUILT OF HELPING KILL ROSE LARNER AND THE MICHIGAN COURTS WHO LET HIM GO WITH ONE YEAR IN JAIL.
