A New Jersey man convicted of killing his parents and two younger brothers in 1976 when he came home from college for Thanksgiving break has been paroled.
Harry De La Roche, 64, was granted parole on May 17, according to state corrections officials. He was then released from South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton to a residential community program on June 29.
De La Roche was an 18-year-old freshman at the Citadel Military Academy in South Carolina when he returned home to Montvale for Thanksgiving and fatally shot his mother and father, Harry Sr. and Mary Jane De La Roche, and his brothers Eric, 12, and Ronald, 15. The latter brother had been shot once in the head and was also beaten and stuffed in a trunk in the attic, according to court documents.
De La Roche initially confessed to the killings but later recanted in court and claimed he only killed Ronald, who he also said had killed the rest of the family. However, a Bergen County jury found him guilty of four counts of first-degree murder in 1978 and he was sentenced to four concurrent life terms.
No clear motive was ever given for the slayings, but people who knew the family have said De La Roche had been bullied at home and during his time in the military academy, which caused him “to snap.”
De La Roche spent more than 45 years in prison and had made several unsuccessful bids for parole, with the last denial coming in 2019.
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