NORRISTOWN – A Norristown man adamantly denied fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend in 1980, claiming he was “railroaded” by investigators, and he angrily lashed out at a prosecutor during cross-examination at his retrial.
“I did not. I absolutely did not shoot Linda,” Robert Fisher testified for defense lawyer Carrie L. Allman on Wednesday as he sat in the witness box on the third day of his retrial in connection with the July 10, 1980, fatal shooting of Linda Rowden in Norristown.
When Allman asked Fisher why he left Norristown on the night Rowden was killed and went to New York City where he remained until being apprehended in 1987, Fisher replied, “I knew I was going to get railroaded … and I’m still being railroaded today.”
But during cross-examination, when Montgomery County First Assistant District Attorney Edward F. McCann Jr. pressed Fisher about why he fled from Norristown and created a false identity in New York, Fisher couldn’t control his anger in front of the jury.
“I left town because I didn’t want to get railroaded for that murder. As soon as I found out that she got murdered … I knew they were going to pin it on me,” Fisher shouted angrily, refuting the testimony of a man who claimed to witness Fisher shooting Rowden and the testimony of a woman who claimed Fisher confessed the killing to her.
“They manufactured a whole lot of stuff … Montgomery County does all kinds of foul stuff,” Fisher bellowed.
Fisher, becoming more agitated as he addressed McCann, claimed witnesses lied and that he was “an easy target” for investigators because two days before the fatal shooting Rowden had reported to police that Fisher had assaulted her.
“Are you angry with me?” McCann asked Fisher at one point.
“Yeah, I don’t like you at all,” Fisher angrily lashed out.
During the retrial, McCann and co-prosecutor Tanner Beck alleged Fisher, now 75 and formerly of the 600 block of DeKalb Street, committed first-degree murder, which is an intentional killing, when he fatally shot Rowden, 26, of Collegeville.
The jury is not aware that Fisher previously was tried and convicted twice for the crime and is the only person in Pennsylvania to be sentenced to death three times.
The latest twist in the 41-year-old case occurred in late 2019 when a federal judge overturned Fisher’s 1991 first-degree murder conviction and 1997 death sentence in connection with Rowden’s death.
Given that decades have passed since Rowden’s death, several witnesses and some of the original investigators have since died and prosecutors, during a painstaking procedure, had their testimony re-read to jurors seated for Fisher’s retrial.
Prosecutors ended their case on Wednesday by reading to the jury the 1991 court testimony of Denise Walker, Fisher’s girlfriend at the time of the fatal shooting. Walker testified she saw Fisher when he returned to their DeKalb Street apartment on the evening of July 10.
“He came home and walked into the bedroom. I was in the bedroom. He said that he was leaving, that he had just shot and killed Linda and he had to get out of town,” Walker claimed, according to a transcript of her Aug. 27, 1991, testimony. “He said that Linda said some things to him that he didn’t like.”
Walker testified in 1991 that Fisher told her that Rowden was “running her face to detectives.”
Earlier, the jury heard the 1991 testimony of Richard Mayo, who claimed he was the front seat passenger in a vehicle operated by Rowden when Fisher, who was Rowden’s ex-boyfriend and was seated behind Rowden, brandished a handgun from his waistband and fatally shot Rowden during an argument as she drove her car along DeKalb Street near Basin Street.
“He pulled out a pistol … and shot her in the neck. Then she bent over and he shot her in the side,” Mayo claimed, according to a transcript of his 1991 testimony. “It looked like a long barrel pistol. It was a revolver. It was dark in color.”
Prosecutors alleged an angry Fisher killed Rowden to prevent her from giving information to police that could link Fisher to the 1980 murder of Nigel Anderson, a witness who had been scheduled to testify in a federal heroin case.
According to Mayo’s 1991 testimony, he recalled Anderson’s name being mentioned during the argument between Fisher and Rowden during the car ride.
However, relying on other testimony and statements that key prosecution witnesses gave to authorities in the 1980s, Allman, the chief homicide lawyer for the public defender’s office, suggested Mayo and Walker provided inconsistent information and that anything they said cannot be trusted.
In one statement, Mayo provided a false name to police and claimed Fisher and Rowden argued about Fisher being accused of stealing a license plate. In other previous testimony, Mayo indicated he didn’t clearly see the gun that Fisher allegedly brandished.
In a July 11, 1980, statement to police, Walker claimed Fisher didn’t say anything to her when he returned to their apartment on July 10 and she didn’t mention a confession.
During the retrial, Allman has argued Fisher did not kill Rowden and suggested it was Mayo who could have shot Rowden.
Fisher, on Wednesday, testified he had been in the vehicle with Rowden and Mayo but during the ride became ill from using heroin and got out of the car and headed to a nearby alley to vomit. Fisher said he never returned to the vehicle and later learned that Rowden had been shot by someone after he had gotten out of the car.
The lawyers are expected to give their closing statements to jurors on Thursday. Judge Todd D. Eisenberg will then hand the case to the jury for deliberations.
Fisher was first convicted of Rowden’s murder in September 1988 and was sentenced to death. To win that conviction, prosecutors relied on Fisher’s previous conviction in federal court of violating Nigel Anderson’s civil rights.
In 1990, the state Supreme Court overturned the county murder conviction after a federal judge overturned Fisher’s federal civil rights conviction.
Fisher was then retried for Rowden’s murder in August 1991, convicted and sentenced to death a second time.
However, in June 1996, the state Supreme Court, while upholding the murder conviction, ruled Fisher should receive a new penalty hearing because jurors at his 1991 trial were improperly allowed to hear victim impact testimony from Rowden’s mother.
After a new penalty hearing in June 1997, Fisher was sentenced to death a third time.
But in late 2019, U.S. District Court Judge Gene E.K. Pratter overturned Fisher’s conviction, ruling a county judge’s instruction on “reasonable doubt” and an example of the concept the judge recited during the 1991 trial was “constitutionally deficient” and “fatally flawed” and that Fisher’s lawyer should have objected to the instruction. Pratter concluded Fisher’s constitutional rights were violated by the instruction.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit upheld Pratter’s decision on Jan. 17, 2020, sending Fisher’s case back to county court for a retrial.
Fisher’s 1997 death sentence also was overturned with Pratter ruling the aggravating factor relied on by prosecutors at the time was improperly applied.
If Fisher is convicted of first-degree murder during the retrial he faces life imprisonment.
