The evening of July 5, 2016, began like many others for 37-year-old Robert Mitchell Jr.
He bellied up to the bar at O’Callaghan’s Pub, one of his haunts on Monroe Avenue, with two signature items: a backpack emblazoned with a Pittsburgh Steelers logo, and his digital camera.
It was championship night in Mitchell’s dart league, and he was favored to win the cash prize, according to interviews later done by Rochester detectives. The game was set for 7 p.m. at J.D. Oxford’s Pub, three blocks east.
Mitchell left O'Callaghan's shortly before the match was to begin. But he never made it to Oxford's. In an unusual move, he left his backpack and camera at O’Callaghan’s.
Around dawn the next morning, a man walking his dog near a wooded area of LaGrange Park, about seven miles away on the city’s far west side, found Mitchell’s body lying face down in a patch of grass.
His head and shoulders had been doused in fire accelerant and set ablaze, and his body was still smoldering when it was found. Black char streaked the grass where the accelerant had been sprayed.
Police believe Mitchell was dead before he was burned and that the fire was a slapdash effort to conceal his identity, which was easily discernable from his multiple tattoos and imposing stature. Mitchell stood 6 feet 9 inches tall, a height that earned him the moniker “Big Rob” on the Monroe Avenue bar circuit.
Mitchell’s homicide is one of more than 500 in Rochester that have gone unsolved since 1969, the earliest date for which the Rochester Police Department has records. That’s about a quarter of all homicides in that time. In police parlance, they are cold cases.
Terry Dearcop has been an investigator with the Rochester Police Department since 2005, and is the lead detective on Mitchell’s homicide. She recalled that the investigation led police to two suspects, both of whom were eventually cleared.
“It’s very frustrating, because we’ve done so much work,” Dearcop said. “In this case, many, many hours and a lot of investigators up here in major crimes worked on this case. It’s frustrating because I know there are people we talked to and they will not tell us what happened.”
Police believe Mitchell’s death wasn’t random and that his killer was known to him. Who killed Mitchell is likely an open secret, said Dearcop, who theorized that disposing of his remains was carried out by more than one person, given Mitchell’s size.
“This case has a lot of solvability,” Dearcop said. “We’ve interviewed over 100 people that knew Robert, and we know that there are people who know what happened. He was a bigger-than-life personality on Monroe Avenue.”
Robert Mitchell Jr. was born in Albany in 1979. His father’s career at 3M had brought him there from his native Cleveland and, soon after Mitchell’s birth, would bring the family to Pittsford. Mitchell and his only sibling, a sister named Ashley, attended and graduated from Sutherland High School.
Sitting in his kitchen on a recent overcast morning, Robert Mitchell Sr. described his son as a “jokester,” a "lady’s man," and a “strong-willed” person who had inherited his father’s gift of gab.
“He was one of the nicest gentle giants that you’d ever want to know,” Mitchell Sr. said with a subdued smile.
He said his son loved music and had tried his hand at rapping for a while. But he found a calling in his late twenties as a photographer. Until his death, Mitchell Jr. ran a photography business under the name Pop Tarentino, shooting music videos and weddings. Wherever he went, the camera came with him.
But his father also described him as someone who lived a divided life.
“I think he kind of got caught up between the suburban lifestyle that we live, and the city street lifestyle of his friends,” Mitchell said. “I guess he was kind of caught between two worlds.”
After graduating high school, Mitchell Jr. attended Morgan State University in Baltimore on a basketball scholarship. He didn’t last long there. His father said he returned home a year later after getting caught up in the college party scene.
“Sometimes too much freedom can be a bad thing,” Mitchell said.
By the time of his death, Mitchell Jr. was facing tough times.
He was couch-surfing at friends’ houses and struggling to maintain his photography business. He had a steady gig coaching youth basketball at the YMCA but spent much of his time in Monroe Avenue bars.
He largely stayed out of legal trouble. Aside from amassing an extensive list of traffic violations, Mitchell Jr. didn’t have any serious run-ins with the law.
Dearcop said interviews conducted during the early investigation into his death led detectives to suspect that money was a factor in his killing.
“Money is the common theme,” Dearcop said. “Rob was definitely struggling financially. He owed some people money, he borrowed money from some friends, he didn’t have a place to live. Like a lot of our cases, I think money is going to be the root that ultimately caused this.”
The last time Mitchell Sr. saw his son was three days before his body was found. Mitchell Jr. was starting a new job in Fairport and his father gave him a ride there. At that point, his father said, nothing seemed amiss.
“We really didn’t have an opportunity to speak again after that,” Mitchell Sr. said. “The next call I got about him was from RPD, that they wanted me to come out and talk to me about my son. I thought maybe driving a car illegally, or whatever. I wasn’t quite sure what it was until they got here.”
His death was not the first major loss for Mitchell Sr. and his wife, Gail. In 2004, their daughter Ashley died of a heart condition during her freshman year at North Carolina Central University.
She is buried in a plot at White Haven Memorial Park in Pittsford. Mitchell Jr. was laid to rest beside her. Beside them are a pair of empty plots, reserved for their parents.
Dearcop has faith that Mitchell Jr.’s killer will be caught, and said that there is a new, promising lead that materialized in recent months. As she inches toward retirement age, she said, she dreads the idea of stepping down before the case closes.
“One case isn’t more important than another, but this case just sticks with me because I know it can be solved,” Dearcop said. “There isn’t just one or two people who know what happened, there are multiple people who know what happened to Rob.”
The patch of grass at the southeast edge of LaGrange Park where Mitchell Jr. was found is still brown and wilted. Empty bottles of his favorite cognacs and wines, Remy Martin and Hpnotiq at the top of the list, rest beside a nearby log as a makeshift shrine.
Meanwhile, the Mitchells have worked to move on. In November, they’ll celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. They have planned a trip to France in the spring.
Mitchell Sr. said he has tried hard to make peace with the loss of his children and to appreciate the life he has left with his wife.
“I’m not the type of person who would be running down to the courthouse, trying to see who it is, or trying to know why, because it doesn’t change my reality,” Mitchell Sr. said. “My reality is I have to move forward, and my family, which is just me and my wife, we have to press forward and just kind of not dwell in that space.”
“If you dwell in that space,” he continued, "it will affect everything you do.”
If you have information about the death of Robert Mitchell Jr., please contact the RPD's Major Crimes Unit at 585-428-7157 or majorcrimes@cityofrochester.gov, or WXXI News reporter Gino Fanelli at 585-775-9692 or gfanelli@wxxi.org.
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