Dela Rosa An 'Angry Woman,' Psychologist Says

Update 5:50 p.m.: As the jury prepared to decide whether Carmela dela Rosa was insane when she threw her 2-year-old granddaughter over the edge of a Tysons Corner Center pedestrian walkway last November, the woman's defense team argued Wednesday she did not choose to have a mental illness that drove her to commit such a horrible act.

The prosecution, however, said it was what the 51-year-old grandmother had planned all along.

Defense attorney Dawn Butorac and Commonwealth's Attorney Raymond F. Morrogh gave closing statements as the jury prepared to choose from four verdicts: not guilty; not guilty by reason of insanity; guilty of first-degree murder, which implies the act was willful, deliberate and premeditated; or guilty of second-degree murder, which implies the act was committed but without those motives.

First-degree murder also implies malice; second-degree murder does not.

Dela Rosa pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity last Monday. Her defense has spent eight days calling expert witnesses who said the woman had major depressive disorder, a condition that included psychotic episodes and delusions.

It was testimony Morrogh called "jibberish" and "psycho babble" in his closing statement. Dela Rosa knew exactly what she was doing.

This wasn't a "sudden impulse … she planned it," Morrogh said.

He reminded the jury of dela Rosa's statements in police interviews hours after the crime, when the woman told them she had decided to throw the toddler over the edge of the walkway about five minutes before it actually happened.

"She was basically angry at the world and her place in it. … She decided to take it out on the child,” he said.

Morrogh also referenced a surveillance video showing dela Rosa pausing before leaving the mall with her family, allowing her family to exit out of the doors and onto the walkway before she and Angelyn follow. 

"It's chilling now seeing it and knowing what's going to happen," he said. "She was intent on completing this horrible act."

Butorac argued, "This tragedy was caused by mental illness," speaking to how debilitating it was for the Fairfax resident.

"She didn't choose to get a mental illness. She was afflicted with mental illness," Butorac said.

She called dela Rosa loving, caring, thoughtful, vibrant and lively, showing jurors pictures of the woman celebrating holidays with family, embracing her newborn granddaughter in the hospital, giving Angelyn a bath and the day of Angelyn's baptism.

"Consider all of the evidence," she told the jury. "Look at Carmela as a whole, as a person. Look at all the photographs. … Think about what her thought process was at that time."

Morrogh told jurors he didn't want to "appeal to [their passions]," explaining why he didn't show any autopsy photos of the toddler after she died the morning following the incident.

"Nobody is seriously disputing" dela Rosa threw Angelyn off the building, he said. It's a natural instinct to want to think she was insane when she did because it's easier to admit than acknowledge 'evil exists in ordinary families," he said.

"It would be nice if there was some other explanation," Morrogh said. "It would be easier if there was."

"This isn't insanity," he said. "This is depravity."

Jurors are expected to pick a foreman tonight. It's unclear when they will deliver their decision.

Update 4 p.m.: In her cross-examination of psychologist Stanton Samenow, defense attorney Dawn Butorac argued traits of borderline personality disorder must be established during childhood, adolescence or early adulthood, but in his diagnosis of Carmela dela Rosa, Samenow only had evidence of her behavior from the past decade.

Butorac cited four references in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the reference book psychologists and psychiatrists use to diagnose mental illnesses, to back up that claim.

Samenow said Wednesday afternoon the two diagnoses given to dela Rosa by various medical experts since she threw her 2-year-old granddaughter over a Tysons Corner Center Walkway — borderline personality disorder and major depressive disorder — are not mutually exclusive.

But he said several of dela Rosa's symptoms pointed toward a borderline personality disorder as the woman's overarching condition.

Some of those symptoms include frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment, displayed when dela Rosa allegedly pulled a knife on her husband last fall to keep him from leaving for work; suicidal behavior, evidenced by two overdoses and driving her own car over an embankment  last spring; and matrimonial ups and downs.

As the cross-examination ended, nearly two dozen members of dela Rosa's family surrounded Kat and James Ogdoc, the parents of 2-year-old Angelyn. Dressed in blacks, grays and navy blues, they took up two full rows in the courtroom awaiting each side's closing arguments.

The jury could begin weighing its decision as early as tonight.

Original: Unlike other psychologists who evaluated and treated Carmela dela Rosa for depression over the course of the past decade, Dr. Stanton Samenow said in court Wednesday the woman did not have a major depressive disorder that brought on psychotic episodes. Instead, he said she suffers from borderline personality disorder, treatable had she taken advantage of the resources available to her.

Dela Rosa is charged with killing her 2-year-old granddaughter by She has by reason of insanity.

Samenow, a psychologist, said the 51-year-old was not insane at the time of the crime but was simply a "very angry woman." He said she did suffer from episodic depression but “it came and went depending on how she thought the world was treating her," he said. “Her therapy was a litany of complaints about other people."

"This was a woman who wanted things on her terms and when things didn't go her way, which often they didn’t, she became angry," he said, framing his diagnosis with details from her health records and personal interviews with her family.

Dela Rosa entered the insanity plea last Monday. On Tuesday, a psychologist from her defense team when she lifted Angelyn Ogdoc over the parking garage railing.

But Samenow, who evaluated dela Rosa while she was in prison, said the hatred she harbored for her son-in-law James Ogdoc — whom she had blamed since 2007 for getting her then-19-year-old daughter Kat pregnant before the pair was married — never subsided.

"This anger was so intense that Mrs. dela Rosa asked her therapist why she had to stop loving Kat and the baby because she hated James," Samenow said.

Evidence of this anger was apparent in her estrangement from her daughter, marital stress, tension with her son David, and the continued hatred she showed toward James Ogdoc before and after Angelyn was born, Samenow said.

In interviews with Samenow, dela Rosa spoke about her relationship with David, telling the psychologist that her son had always been mad at her and never liked her. In more than 10 hours of interviews with Samenow, dela Rosa did not say one positive thing about David, Samenow said.

He also said dela Rosa was not making the most of resources available to her to control her anger. She had a family that was supportive, she had mental health resources, she had prescription medication available to her and she had a long-term relationship with a therapist, Samenow said, but never used any of those tools to make her situation better.

Samenow said dela Rosa thought about throwing Angelyn off the railing before the family walked across it last Nov. 29. As Kat, David and her husband Leandro ate dinner in the mall's food court that night, dela Rosa played with Angelyn around the food court. She said in an interview with Samenow that at one point, Angelyn began playing with the automatic doors that led out to the parking garage walkway.

It was at that point the seed was planted, Samenow said. Dela Rosa told him she first thought about hurting the toddler at that moment, but "something held her back."

Samenow also pointed to interviews Fairfax County Police conducted with dela Rosa in the hours immediately after the crime. She didn't inquire once about the condition of the child, Samenow said. Instead, she asked "What's going to happen to me next?" and later, "Is this going to be out in the public?"

Samenow, expected to be the last witness to take the stand before closing arguments begin today, was called by the prosecution to speak as a medical expert. They did not call him in their first round of witnesses because it is the defense team's burden to prove dela Rosa was insane at the time of the crime.

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