Before Rosie Tapia’s Disappearance
Rosie was an outgoing girl, Lewine recalls. She loved playing dress up, waking up early to watch cartoons and her teacher Ms. Martinez. Lewine says Rosie had an independent spirit, remembering how on her first day of kindergarten, she walked several blocks home at the end of recess instead of back into the building, mistakenly believing that the school day was over.
“She was always excited to go to school. But she was even more excited to come home,” Lewine says.
Rosie came home to a full house. In addition to Rosie and Lewine, the three-bedroom apartment also housed Lewine’s husband, Roberto; Rosie’s two younger siblings (a pair of 4-year-old twins, Robert and Angelica); and Lewine’s two children from a previous marriage, Emilia and Esmeralda Elizondo, both teenagers.
The day before Rosie’s disappearance—a Saturday—Lewine remembers allowing the girl to go to a playground close by with a friend from the apartment building. Lewine prepared a family dinner of tacos, and then left with Roberto for the evening to hear live music, putting Rosie and the other young children into the babysitting care of 18-year-old Emelia who had a friend, Alicia, staying over that night.
Returning home after midnight, Lewine says she went into the young children’s bedroom and saw the three safely sleeping.
“I closed their window, but I didn’t close it all the way so they could get some air,” Lewine says. “It’s pretty hot here in August.”
When she woke up “around 4:30 or 5:00,” Lewine says that she sensed something was wrong.”
Moments later, her nightmare began.
“My husband and daughter went outside, screaming her name,” Lewine says.
By 6:00 in the morning, the family had printed flyers and were putting them up around the neighborhood. And then, around 9:30 a.m., they found a body in the canal.
“I thought, ‘That can’t be my Rosie,’ Lewine recalls. “But when my brother came back [from speaking with the police] he was pale white. I said, ‘Don’t tell me,’ and he goes, ‘It’s Rosie.’”
The Different Theories on Rosie Tapia’s Abduction
In the years since Rosie’s murder, there have been several potential leads. A rock with a note attached to it was left at Rosie’s grave in 2002, drawing attention from the Salt Lake City Police Department (SLCPD), though they haven’t made public the contents of the note. There was a police composite sketch, drawn in 2015 from the memory of an eyewitness, who said they saw a man coming up from the canal wearing dripping wet pants in the early morning of Rosie’s murder.
In 2019, private investigators started looking for DNA from a Barbie doll which had been left on her grave soon after her burial. Nonprofit organization Utah Cold Case Coalition said at the time that two possible persons of interest who had some fixation with Barbies had been identified in the case.
SLCPD said in an August 2025 statement that they were interested in finding two Hispanic men who were between the ages of 16 and 20 at the time of Rosie’s slaying and had visited Emilia and her friend the evening before Rosie’s murder. The two men may have been gang affiliated, and an eyewitness claims to have seen them drinking beer with the babysitters.
Detective Michael Ruff, a spokesman for the SLCPD, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that the department believes there were “two individuals at the apartment without the parents’ permission” on the night of Rosie’s disappearance who have never spoken with authorities, and that they may have information that could solve the case.
Lewine says police have told her that they believe her daughter, Emilia, threw a party the night of Rosie’s death, prior to Lewine and Roberto’s return from the concert, and that one of the attendees later perpetrated the crime. But Lewine doesn’t believe it.
Emilia was questioned by the police multiple times, but was never considered a suspect.
“When we came home, no one was there. Only her, and her friends, and the kids,” she remembers. “It didn’t smell like beer. And we didn’t see any bottles. And she was sober.”
Ruff declined to call the people in the Tapia home “a party,” but re-emphasized the department’s theory that unaccounted-for young people had been at the home the night that Rosie died.
Can the Killer Be Found?
There is a cash reward of $100,000 for information that leads to the arrest of Rosie’s killer.
Jason Jensen, a private investigator, has worked with the Tapia family pro-bono since 2016 and says he has personally staked $70,000 towards the reward..“Home is your inner sanctum. It’s where you think your kids are safest,” Jensen tells A&E Crime + Investigation, explaining his emotional rationale for contributing out of his own pocket.
Jensen believes the theory of the party is misguided. He theorizes that the perpetrator comes from Emilia’s social circle, a few steps removed from her.
He also suspects that there are people who lived in the Tapias’ apartment complex who know the identity of Rosie’s killer and could be swayed to talk.
Emilia Elizondo died in 2020, aged 43, of natural causes, which Lewine tells A&E Crime + Investigation were connected to diabetes.
As far as forensic evidence collected at the scene, Ruff says that, “Right now, there’s nothing. We’ve tested everything we’ve got,” adding that the fact of her body being retrieved from the water degraded whatever DNA evidence they may have collected.
And although Jensen and the SLCPD disagree on where the most promising leads might be, they agree that there are still people alive who know the truth of what happened that night—and they are begging them to come forward.
“Lewine has lost her daughter and for 30 years been left wondering why,” Ruff says “The family wants closure. We hope somebody will bring that forward.”
