Parents speak of verdict, son

KELLEY KORBIN

In the nine years since their 38-year-old son was senselessly murdered in his Vancouver apartment, Jack and Doreen Rozen have been following his footsteps on a pilgrimage to keep his memory alive. They have been to Israel, Jordan and China – and many places closer to home, too; climbing walls and sand dunes and posing for photos, using snapshots Marc Rozen left behind as a guidepost for their travels. But the most arduous journey of all took place over the last year, as they made the short daily commute across the Lions Gate Bridge to the Vancouver Supreme Court, where their son’s killer sat on trial.

Every weekday for six months the Rozens sat, three feet from the bulletproof glass enclosure where the man accused of killing their son was perched, as they tried to gain some clarity on what happened during 20 minutes of time on Jan. 6, 2004, when Michael Newman and a female accomplice brutalized their son.

Attending the trial was a lonely and excruciating experience for the couple who have clung fiercely to each other and their daughter Liza and her young family in the years since Marc’s murder.

The Rozens knew that their son was killed by someone who had come to his apartment to look at an $18,000 diamond engagement ring he was selling. They also knew that witnesses in the building heard a 20-minute-long altercation, with alternating periods of fighting, yelling, pleading and silence. But they did not know many of the details, including the fact that Marc was stabbed 62 times and shot to death in an “execution style” murder in what the trial judge, William Ehrcke, termed a “particularly sadistic” crime when, in March of this year, he found United Nations Gang member Michael Newman guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to the mandatory life in prison with no eligibility of parole for 25 years.

“Remember, no one knew what happened to Marc except the killer,” said Jack Rozen. “Doreen and I were stuck in time for that 20 minutes of fighting.” He went on to explain that as horrific and taxing as the trial was, it provided the Rozens, and the police investigators, with answers to many of the questions they had fixated on for years, including the name of the doctor who treated the wounded killer in the aftermath of the attack.

It also provided a forum for character witnesses to publicly confirm what the Rozens already knew about their son. Witnesses spoke of Marc’s generous spirit and optimism. Not a surprise for family and friends who have dozens of stories of how Marc was helpful and trusting and saw the beauty in everyone.

Marc, who held a law degree from St. Louis University, practised law for several years in Bellingham, Wash., before leaving the legal profession to pursue a career in helping youth in crisis in his hometown of Vancouver. From the homeless people at the local Safeway to people he met at the bus stop, to the troubled youth he worked with at Maples Adolescent Treatment Centre in Vancouver, Marc seemingly had a calling to help the disadvantaged. And, perhaps because of his size (he was six-foot-two and 220 pounds), he did so in unconventional ways – like inviting people he barely knew in to his home, or even to the home of his parents, without regard to the potential dangers.

“We used to constantly warn him,” said Jack, “but he believed truly that he could turn anything that’s bad into good. Marc could see the good in everybody. He helped helpless and hungry people.”

That’s why his last known words resonate so deeply for his parents.

At the trial, the Rozens learned that a witness in the apartment building reported hearing Marc ask, “Why are you doing this to me?,” as he struggled with his killer.

Marc’s parents saw the poignancy in that question.

“He lived in this world where people were all basically good and he had a lot of faith and trust and he would never have understood why someone would desecrate and treat him the way that this person was doing to him. I know why he asked, because he couldn’t understand,” explained Doreen, who acknowledged that sitting through Newman’s trail was agonizing to the point where she often felt physically nauseated watching Marc’s killer and listening to him spin fantastical tales in his attempt at a defence.

Clearly, none of the answers the trial provided could make sense of a senseless crime. And, it left the Rozens with graphic and horrifying images of their son’s death. But it also provided the grieving parents an opportunity to bear witness for their son.

The first-degree murder verdict was the most the Rozens could have hoped for, but they called it, “a hollow victory.”

“It was a victory for our son, because it proved that his life was worth so much, and that what he did was so important in the world.... There was a lesson to [Newman] as to who [Marc] was and what his value was and, in a way, our son was victorious even though he lost his life and we’re all missing him so very much,” said Doreen.

“I’m glad I sat through the trial and, I have to be honest, although there was such ugliness that came out of it, we learned what happened to our son and I felt that by being there Jack and I were there for him,” she added, pausing as she was overcome with emotion, and then adding, “That he didn’t go alone.”

For Jack, who was orphaned at the age of nine, after most of his family perished at the hands of the Nazis in the Holocaust, Marc was a sort of retribution. “My son was the living proof that my parents and siblings did not die in vain. Marc would be there to carry on the Rozen name and bear witness after I was gone. My son would represent us all,” said Jack, tears streaming down his face.

“Because I had my son, there was a way of saying to my family, ‘You see, we’re going on, we’re not going to stop here.’ That’s what [Newman] killed for me. How do I answer my parents now?” he asked futilely.

Jack never saw his parents’ or brothers’ killers brought to justice. But he did have that opportunity for Marc.

“You know something, by being there in the courtroom and knowing, believe it or not, as horrendous as it was, I felt closer to my son. As odd as it may sound, I felt by being in court with the man that did this to my son, I was still holding on to my son. I felt a closeness to my son. It was important. I had to go through it.”

Jack acknowledged that while it may be hard for people not in his shoes to understand, he also desperately hoped, in vain as it turned out, that he would find “something nice out of Marc’s last moment” – something to soften the violence and ugliness of his death – from the testimony in the trial.

“But there was absolutely nothing. Pain, that’s all I can tell you. It was pain. You know, what I thought was, that horrid man was the last person that my son saw. That’s what makes me sick,” said Jack, barely managing to mask his anger. “Marc loved life, loved beauty, loved people and scenery and traveled all over the world and to think that my son faced [him], that’s what I will never be able to get rid of.”

However, the Rozens have carried on. And their love for one another is obvious to anyone who spends even an hour with them. They both acknowledge that hatred and bitterness lurk beneath the surface, but somehow they have managed, with Marc’s help, to go on living.

Doreen put it this way, “It’s hard for me to think of my son gone and how I kept going. I felt that I really had to because I have a daughter, I have two grandchildren and Jack, my husband, I couldn’t let him down – we were suffering so much – but Marc was a liver of life, and I felt I could do no less than to emulate his spirit. So, I made a real effort to do that ... I gradually got on with living and tried to contribute to life and not just lock myself up and walk away, because I know my son would not have wanted that, not for a minute.”

Jack agreed: “I had two choices. I had to go on as my son would wish I would go on, or I would go mad and have a complete breakdown.”

“Marc was very important for the continuity of my life. I had never told anyone that, but my family knew that,” said Jack, adding, “And l’m learning every day as I’m going through life, my son is with us. He really is with us. We keep him alive in every day. We eat something great, we see anything of beauty and automatically we say, ‘Marc would have loved this.’ And let me tell you something, how he loved his mother, and how Doreen loved him. I experience tremendous sadness when I enter a room and find my wife quietly crying alone, mourning the loss of our beloved son. I feel like such a failure because I know that I can’t take away her grief and pain. All I can do is hold her, say nothing and share the silence.”

Kelley Korbin is a freelance writing living in West Vancouver.

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