Robert Rozier was a professional football player who joined the Nation of Yahweh, a Black separatist religious movement based in Miami, Florida. In September and October 1986 he took part in the killing of four people at the direction of the movement's leader, Yahweh ben Yahweh, who was born Hulon Mitchell Jr. Rozier later turned against the leader, pleaded guilty to four counts of second-degree murder, and became the central witness in the federal racketeering case that sent Yahweh ben Yahweh to prison.
His story does not end with the Florida case. After serving a term reported as seven to ten years and entering federal witness protection, Rozier lived in California under the name Robert Rameses. He was convicted there in July 2000 of passing bad checks. Because the four Florida murder convictions counted as prior strikes under California's three-strikes law, the sentence was 25 years to life.
Little is known of Rozier's childhood. A 1992 trial summary in a reference work on famous trials says he played football for the University of California Golden Bears and then for the St. Louis Cardinals of the National Football League. A 2019 Miami broadcast series, The Florida Files, adds that he played only six games for the Cardinals, that reports of drug use and petty crime followed him, and that he later spent a short time in Canada. The series also reported that an investigator working for the defense found that his college nickname had been "Lying Bob."
Hulon Mitchell Jr. was born in Oklahoma in 1935, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, and spent time in the Nation of Islam in Atlanta before arriving in Miami in 1978. There he declared himself a Black messiah and founded the Nation of Yahweh, and he came to be known as Yahweh ben Yahweh. Its headquarters in the Miami area was known as the Temple of Love. Followers took the surname Israel, and Rozier became Neariah Israel.
The movement owned an apartment complex in Opa-locka, a city north of Miami, according to The Florida Files. Two of the killings for which Rozier was convicted involved tenants of that complex.
A federal appeals court gave the most detailed account of the movement's inner workings. In January 1996 the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit decided United States v. Beasley, the appeal of six followers and of Yahweh ben Yahweh himself. The opinion describes Rozier as the government's key witness.
According to the opinion, Rozier testified that an ultra-secret group called the Brotherhood had been formed within the movement. Its members met separately with the leader and were bound to secrecy. Rozier named the men who attended the meetings. He testified that membership required a killing and that the victims were to be white people.
The court also summarized testimony about specific killings in which Rozier took part. The opinion says the leader told him to kill a white man, and that Rozier killed two men in Miami. It names the two men as Glendell Fowler and Kurt Doerr, and does not give a date. Elsewhere the opinion describes Rozier as having killed six people at the leader's direction, without listing all six.
The California Court of Appeal listed four victims in the counts to which Rozier pleaded guilty, and these two men were not among them. It also noted that Florida dismissed murder charges in three other cases as part of his plea; which cases those were has not been reported.
In September 1986, the federal opinion says, the leader ordered Rozier and another member, Carl Douglas Perry, to kill white people. Two people died that night in the Miami area, one of them Raymond Kelly. The California Court of Appeal later spelled his surname Kelley. The second victim's name has not been reported.
Rozier also admitted taking part in the killing of Cecil Branch on or about September 20, 1986, according to The Florida Files. The federal opinion says a fingerprint on the frame of Branch's front door matched Rozier's prints. No account places the killing more precisely than the Miami area.
Two more victims in the case against Rozier died in a single event. In October 1986, according to the Eleventh Circuit, Anthony Brown and Rudy Broussard (called Rudy in the federal opinion and Rudolph by the California court) had resisted the movement's effort to buy an apartment complex in Opa-locka. The leader ordered Rozier and Perry to kill them, and both men died.
Rozier was charged with first-degree murder in connection with the Opa-locka killings. A 2019 broadcast report on the case states that Rozier pleaded guilty to the murders of the two tenants of the building, and to two other murders.
How Rozier came to be in custody has not been reported. The Florida Files reported that after he agreed to cooperate with the police, the leader excommunicated him, and that Jayne Weintraub, a defense lawyer for the leader, said he had been banished from the temple.
What Rozier gave investigators was a long account of crimes he said the leader had ordered. Richard Scruggs, the assistant United States attorney who later prosecuted the leader, described to the broadcaster a roughly 20-page proffer submitted by Rozier's attorney to the state. In it, about ten to twelve murders were described with the killers' names left blank. Rozier then filled in his own name beside six of them. Scruggs called that the biggest con of a lifetime and said that about 90 percent of the proffer's narrative was later told at trial.
The California Court of Appeal, in an opinion issued in 2016, gave the clearest account of the plea. In 1988 Rozier first pleaded not guilty to four counts of second-degree murder, which had been reduced from first-degree murder. He then entered guilty pleas to all four. In return the state dismissed murder charges in three other cases.
The agreement required him to cooperate fully with local and federal authorities investigating the movement and to testify against its members. It set a sentence of 22 years, to run concurrently with any other Florida homicide sentences. It also provided that he would be eligible for release under state and federal guidelines and would then be placed in a federal witness protection program. At the plea hearing he stipulated that each indictment stated a prima facie case. The California court named the four victims as Branch and Kelley, who died in September 1986, and Brown and Broussard, who died in October 1986.
The 2019 broadcast gave a different account. It said that, under a deal with the state attorney's office, Rozier pleaded guilty to two manslaughter charges and received 22 years, 11 years on each. Elsewhere the same program said he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the deaths of four people. The court record states second-degree murder in four counts, and the sentence of 22 years is common to both versions.
In November 1990 a federal grand jury in Miami indicted Yahweh ben Yahweh and 16 followers on racketeering charges. Newsweek reported that the FBI described the charges as a pattern of terrorism and that 16 of the 17 were charged with ordering or committing 14 murders. The reference work on the 1992 trial lists the charges as an arson in Delray Beach, extortion and threats against tenants in Opa-locka, two attempted killings and 14 murders, with another murder added later by a grand jury. The encyclopedia entry dates the FBI raid on the movement's headquarters to November 7, 1990.
The state of Florida had declined to prosecute the leader for the killings. Scruggs told the broadcaster that the federal case used the racketeering statute because of that, and that it was the first time the statute was used against a religious organization.
The trial began on January 2, 1992, and ran until May 28, 1992, with Judge Norman Roettger presiding and Scruggs leading the prosecution. The leader was defended by Alcee Hastings. Rozier testified for the government. Describing the movement's members, he told the jury, "We did everything from driving a bus to killing someone if necessary," according to The Florida Files.
The defense attacked his credibility. Ellis Rubin, a lawyer for the leader, publicly questioned his past. At trial the defense tried to call a psychologist, Dr. Barry Crown, to say that Rozier was a psychopath with no conception of the truth. The Eleventh Circuit held that expert testimony on a witness's truthfulness is generally inadmissible, noted that the defense had cross-examined Rozier extensively, and found no prejudice. A separate complaint concerned the late disclosure of the proffer Rozier had written. The court found no reasonable probability that earlier disclosure would have changed the result.
The verdicts were mixed. Yahweh ben Yahweh was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, while the jury could not agree on the racketeering charge that would have tied him directly to the killings. Six followers were convicted of conspiracy, seven were acquitted, and the jury deadlocked on two. Yahweh ben Yahweh was sentenced to 18 years. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed the convictions of the seven appellants in January 1996.
Prosecutors and the movement's supporters described Rozier very differently. Scruggs told the broadcaster that Rozier was a con man who had fooled the state and who "wasn't violent that we saw." He said that the two could not be in the same room by the time of the trial, that Rozier was never paid, and that he had tried without success to undo the state's deal. Scruggs also said he would have prosecuted Rozier if evidence of other killings had surfaced.
Venita Mitchell, the leader's daughter, called Rozier a paid liar and said he had killed several men before he joined the movement. Scruggs disputed this and said investigators found no evidence of earlier killings. Weintraub said Rozier had committed many murders and could not be believed. Maurice Symonette, a codefendant who was acquitted, told the broadcaster that Rozier had admitted lying when he claimed Symonette had given instructions. Scruggs replied that other witnesses supported the government's case as well, among them the leader's sister, members of one family and another man who testified. Those allegations came from people on the defense side.
Under the plea agreement Rozier was moved out of Florida. Scruggs told the broadcaster that he took Rozier from state custody into federal protection because the movement's members were going to kill him.
The Florida Files reported that Rozier served about ten years and was released in 1996, that he took the name Robert Rameses, and that he moved to California. The California Court of Appeal, by contrast, wrote that he served about seven years. The two figures have never been reconciled.
In California, Rameses was charged in El Dorado County with writing bad checks. A jury convicted him in July 2000 on one count of passing bad checks, finding that he had knowingly written more than two dozen of them to 12 businesses. The trial court found that the checks totaled nearly $2,300. The Florida broadcast gave 27 checks and $2,200, and placed his arrest in 2001, the year of the sentence.
The jury also found that he had four prior strike convictions, namely the four Florida second-degree murder convictions. In January 2001 the court sentenced him to 25 years to life. The judge was reported to have told him that he had been "home free" and had kept committing crimes. An earlier appeal from that conviction, number C037486, was affirmed, and the court there rejected his argument that Florida and California define second-degree murder differently.
In November 2014 Rameses petitioned to be resentenced under Proposition 36, the 2012 Three Strikes Reform Act, arguing again that the Florida convictions should not count, and also sought relief under Proposition 47. On January 15, 2015, the trial court denied both petitions. It found that the prior convictions made him ineligible and that he remained a danger to society. He then moved for a hearing, arguing that using the priors violated an immunity agreement with the federal government. The court denied that motion.
On September 15, 2016, the California Court of Appeal for the Third District affirmed. It held that the record showed implied-malice murder under California law for at least two of the Florida convictions, which made him ineligible under Proposition 36, and that the bad checks exceeded the $950 threshold, which made him ineligible under Proposition 47. The opinion was not certified for publication.
Yahweh ben Yahweh served nearly 11 years of his 18-year sentence and was released from federal prison in September 2001. After the federal trial the state of Florida charged him with first-degree murder in the death of Cecil Branch. On December 17, 1992, he and three followers were acquitted. He died of prostate cancer on May 7, 2007.
As of the Court of Appeal decision of September 15, 2016, the sentence of 25 years to life remained in place.
Proven by his own guilty pleas, and final: four counts of second-degree murder in Florida, covering Raymond Kelly, Cecil Branch, Anthony Brown and Rudolph Broussard.
Described in testimony, not tried against him: the killings of Glendell Fowler and Kurt Doerr, and the broader statement in the Eleventh Circuit opinion that he had killed six people at the leader's direction. These are accounts the court summarized from his testimony and the leader's trial. Florida dismissed murder charges in three other cases as part of his plea.
Disputed: the terms of the Florida deal (four murder pleas with 22 years, according to the California court, against two manslaughter pleas at 11 years each according to a 2019 broadcast report), the time he served (about seven years against about ten), and the number of bad checks and their total.
Unproven: the claim by the leader's daughter and a defense lawyer that he killed before joining the movement. The prosecutor said investigators found no such evidence.
1978: Hulon Mitchell Jr. arrives in Miami and founds the Nation of Yahweh.
Date not given: the killings of Glendell Fowler and Kurt Doerr, described in the federal opinion.
September 1986: Raymond Kelly and a second person are killed; Cecil Branch is killed on or about September 20.
October 1986: Anthony Brown and Rudolph Broussard are killed in Opa-locka.
1988: Rozier pleads guilty to four counts of second-degree murder; 22-year sentence; cooperation and witness protection.
November 7, 1990: federal raid on the movement's headquarters; indictment of the leader and followers.
January 2 to May 28, 1992: federal trial in Florida; Rozier testifies; the leader is convicted of conspiracy to commit murder.
December 17, 1992: the leader and three followers are acquitted of the Branch murder in state court.
January 5, 1996: Eleventh Circuit affirms the federal convictions.
1996: Rozier released, according to a 2019 broadcast report.
July 2000: California jury convicts Robert Rameses of passing bad checks and finds four prior strikes.
January 2001: sentenced to 25 years to life.
September 2001: Yahweh ben Yahweh released from federal prison.
May 7, 2007: Yahweh ben Yahweh dies.
November 2014: Rameses petitions for resentencing.
January 15, 2015: petitions denied.
September 15, 2016: Court of Appeal affirms.