Elizabeth Mascarelli decided she needed a break that day.
The 29-year-old New Jersey woman took a time out from dismembering her murder victim to visit McDonald’s for a snack.
Mascarelli — a mother of one — was convicted and caged for 25 years for shacking up with a wanted murderer and then conspiring with him to kill and dismember a man who was letting them stay at his home.
Prosecutors likened the slaying to the “plot of a horror movie.”
“Her character is demonstrated by choosing to harbour an individual who was known to be wanted for murder, by choosing to shoot Kelly Rollason, the person who was allowing her to stay in the house, and then leave his body on the basement floor to take a break and grab a quick bite to eat at McDonald’s with her codefendants, and come back and mutilate his body like an animal carcass at the butcher,” Ocean County Prosecutor Julie Peterson said.
Rollason, 56, of Toms River, N.J., was shot to death in July 2024. Mascarelli pleaded guilty in December to aggravated manslaughter.
The tragic man was allowing Mascarelli and three others — including fugitive Maxwell Johnson, who killed himself during a police standoff — to stay at his home.
Prosecutors said that the woman conspired with Johnson. After shooting Rollason, they dismembered his body and dumped his body parts 32 km away.
“Frankly, the facts are the plot of a horror movie,” Peterson said at Mascarelli’s sentencing, according to the Asbury Park Press.
“One has to suspend themselves from reality to accept that something so gruesome, so horrific, inhumane, could happen right here in Toms River, in Ocean County, New Jersey.”
Mascarelli blamed Johnson for manipulating her into the murder. He had previously killed his ex-girlfriend Gabriella Caroleo.
Johnson was terrorizing everyone in the home and “carried a firearm at all times, brandishing it often,” her lawyer claimed at the sentencing.
Lawyer Glenn Kassman said the convicted killer was “suspicious and paranoid of everyone and everything,” even attacking pillows with knives.
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Both parties spent their days hammering drugs and dealing them. Prosecutors said the couple were caught on video engaging in sexual acts.
Peterson said: “Licking and kissing the gun that he was using to open fire.”
After murdering Rollason, Mascarelli took snapshots of the dead man’s body as “a memory of something she seems to be proud of,” Peterson said, adding that she left the body in the basement while she, Johnson and other housemates — Jared Krysiak, Jared Palumbo and Danielle Bolstad — went to get McDonald’s.
Krysiak, 34, Palumbo, 36, and Bolstad, 42, have all pleaded guilty and are currently awaiting sentencing.
Mascarelli was ordered to serve a minimum of 85% of her prison sentence before being eligible to apply for parole. After her release, she will be under supervision for five years.
@HunterTOSun