Roberta Roper had just gotten word in the spring of 1982 that the body of her missing daughter had been found in St. Mary’s County, when a church youth group moderator showed up at her door in Prince George’s County with a clipboard and plans for a Stephanie Roper Family Resource Committee. That community support helped sustain the Roper family through the police investigation and trials that followed. Their experience with the criminal justice system sparked a victims’ rights movement that changed Maryland law and the way business is conducted in courtrooms throughout the state.
Stephanie Roper, 22, disappeared 30 years ago April 3. A tip to police in St. Mary’s about a week later led them to a swamp in Oakville and to the arrest of two suspects, including a teenage boy. Both were charged as adults and wound up receiving life sentences in prison for murder. But because the possibility of parole remained, a life sentence didn’t guarantee the murderers would never leave prison. This pained the slain woman’s parents, who suffered the further indignity of not being allowed in the courtroom during the suspects’ trials.
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