The cold trial of a man accused of the 1988 murder of Betty Rolf begins

Editor’s Note: This story contains some content that readers may find disturbing.

APPLETON – The 1988 murder of Betty Rolf has been an unsolved mystery in the Fox Valley for more than 35 years.

As the trial of a man accused of sexually assaulting and killing Rolf began Tuesday, prosecutors expect the mystery will finally be solved.

Defense attorneys say they disagree.

Gene Meyer, 68, is charged with one count of first-degree murder and one count of first-degree sexual assault with the use of a dangerous weapon.

The process is expected to last two weeks. Jury selection took place all day Monday, and opening statements and the first five prosecution witnesses testified on Tuesday.

In opening arguments for the prosecution, Outagamie County District Attorney Melinda Tempelis said Rolf’s family had waited 12,972 days – or 35 years, six months and seven days – to reach this moment.

Rolf was a beloved mother and grandmother who was living a quiet life in Appleton when she was brutally sexually assaulted and murdered on her way to work on the morning of Nov. 6, 1988, Tempelis said.

Rolf worked several jobs, including laundry at the Country Aire Banquet Room, 2311 W. Spencer St., in the town of Grand Chute. She enjoyed walking and often preferred to walk to work rather than drive – especially in winter because she feared the dangers of black ice. Her home in the 1300 block of West Spencer Street was less than a mile away.

As she crossed the Spencer Street bridge over the train tracks that snowy morning, according to Tempelis, Meyer “ripped” her off the road and dragged her under the bridge near the train tracks, out of sight of anyone who might have passed by.

While details of how the attack unfolded are not known, Tempelis said the evidence in court would show that Meyer sexually abused Rolf, physically assaulted her and strangled her, either leaving her after her death or letting her die.

Rolf’s body was found the next morning after her family called the police. She was found lying partially clothed behind a concrete pillar next to the railroad tracks. She had been strangled by the straps of her purse. Some of the contents of Rolf’s open purse were scattered around, including $30 and a document she was sending to The Post-Crescent about her and her husband’s upcoming anniversary, Tempelis said.

Tempelis said Meyer then fled Wisconsin and lived in Washington for most of the next three and a half decades until a familial DNA search in 2022 narrowed him down as the main suspect.

Defense attorney Ian Mevis argued in his opening arguments that Rolf was actually killed by her husband.

“The state wants you to believe they have solved the mystery. … They want you to believe they have an answer to the question, ‘Who killed Betty Rolf?'” Mevis said. “You will have very few answers. In fact, you’ll be left with more questions.”

The DNA evidence, Mevis said, showed only that Meyer and Rolf had sexual contact sometime in the days or weeks before her murder. There is no way to prove from DNA evidence that the sexual contact was non-consensual.

Rolf’s husband had abused his wife throughout their marriage, especially when he drank. He was also unfaithful – something that was widely known to both his own family and the community, Mevis said.

Mevis reminded the jury what he explained at length during the jury selection process Monday – that the defense does not have the burden of proving Meyer’s innocence. The responsibility lies solely with the prosecution to prove beyond a doubt that Meyer was Rolf’s murderer.

Prosecution witnesses who testified Tuesday included two of Rolf’s children, who were 28 and 32 at the time of their mother’s death.

Both said that their father became “nasty” while drinking and insulted their mother. They both said they had never seen their father hit their mother, but recalled that when they were young, their mother sometimes had injuries on her face.

Rolf’s son testified that before his death in 1999, he asked her father if he was responsible for Rolf’s murder.

However, Rolf’s son and daughter, who testified Tuesday, both said they did not believe their father was responsible for their mother’s murder.

Other witness statements discussed Rolf’s autopsy.

The forensic pathologist who performed Rolf’s autopsy has since died, but a forensic pathologist who studied with him, Dr. Robert Corliss, took the stand to answer questions about Rolf’s injuries in detail.

The autopsy revealed that Rolf died of blunt force trauma to the head and strangulation. Corliss testified that Rolf also had abrasions on other parts of her body, some of which were due to her lying on a bed of rocks and brush.

The jury was presented with relevant photographs of Rolf’s injuries taken during the autopsy.

Corliss said the autopsy found no evidence of injuries consistent with sexual assault, but the absence of injuries does not mean a sexual assault did not occur.

If the jury finds Meyer guilty of killing Rolf, he could face life in prison. For the accusation of sexual assault alone, Rolf faces a maximum of 60 years in prison.

Over the past 35 years, investigators have reopened Rolf’s murder case several times as technological advances allowed more tests to be conducted.

Still, there were few leads in finding Rolf’s killer until the Outagamie County Sheriff’s Office began re-examining the cold case in 2019.

In 2022, a familial DNA test narrowed the suspects down to two people: Meyer and his brother. Police interviewed Meyer’s brother, who said he believed Meyer was dead. The brother provided a DNA sample that ruled him out as a suspect.

Investigators determined that Meyer had lived in the 1980s at an address about a mile from where Rolf’s body was found and had also worked for a time at a nearby cannery.

They tracked Meyer to Washington, where he lived on land that belonged to someone else, in a trailer with no electricity or running water, Tempelis said in opening statements.

FBI agents took a DNA sample from the handle of Meyer’s truck. An analysis showed that the probability that Meyer was not the originator of the male DNA found on Rolf was one in a quadrillion, Tempelis said.

In December 2022, Meyer was arrested in Washington. He was subsequently extradited to Wisconsin and arraigned in Outagamie County Circuit Court in February 2023.

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