Sunday, Jul 6, 2008
Eric Rosser hit the charts twice -- as a member of John Mellencamp's band and as one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, sought on sex crime charges.
Oct 22, 2001 | A few days after being arrested, Eric Rosser sits in his luxury condominium in Bangkok composing an e-mail to the city's leading newspapers. "My name is Eric Rosser," he writes. "Until last Wednesday I have been known as a gifted pianist and teacher, a ten-year resident of Bangkok with a large circle of friends and colleagues and a wonderful wife and family. I believe my friends would have characterized me as an exceptionally kind, gentle and artistic person. Now, since my arrest on Wednesday, I have been exposed as a pedophile."
"Yes, I am a pedophile," Rosser types. "As far as I can tell I was born this way, or became so even before the age of 5. I know normal sex play of children was an obsession with me. Even when I became an adult, I felt a child within. I still feel this way, a child masquerading in an adult body. I have never been able to believe in a God who could have perversely created me this way."
Headlined "The confession of a reluctant pedophile," the letter dominates the front page of Bangkok's the Nation newspaper on February 12, 2000, a remarkable testimony to both Rosser's prominence in the city and his hubris. Renowned for helping rock star John Mellencamp hit the charts and as the long-time house pianist for Bangkok's posh Oriental Hotel, Rosser also ran a music school for the city's upper-class children. In the letter Rosser dissembles he only had sex with 4 or 5 children and never molested any of his young music students -- he was not "a monster of depravity." He assures his readers, "I am a wonderful teacher," and he contends that society should tolerate pedophiles, invoking the "child-like approach to the world" of Charlie Chaplin and Lewis Carroll. "We are your friends and neighbors," he writes.
Three days before, 10 Royal Thai Police and FBI agents -- including police Col. Chachvan Bunmee and FBI agent Tony Siedl, both of whom I interviewed for this story -- climbed the broad marble steps of Rosser's condo. They knocked on his door and showed a search warrant to Rosser's Thai wife, Muay. Rosser and the couple's curly-headed toddler, Max, were sleeping inside. Tham, their 10-year-old niece, who lived with them, was already at school.
After the officers woke Rosser, he sat slumped at a table, a 48-year-old man with a high domed head and brooding eyes behind gold wire rims, wearing a freshly pressed plaid shirt and casual pants. Repeatedly, he raged at the police for daring to impose this on him, a gifted artist and teacher.
Rosser told the police the child pornography they sought was at his nearby Rosser Music Studio. In a back room full of video equipment, he showed them a concealed chest containing hundreds of photographs and videotapes of child molestations. "These tapes are terrible and very explicit," the police spokesman told Bangkok's the Nation.
The police also found two hidden cameras. Rosser hid one in the school's toilet, and aimed the other to shoot under his students' dresses as they played the piano. In one photo Rosser sat on a piano bench pulling down a small Thai girl's panties. The Thai authorities booked Rosser into prison for child sex crimes and marijuana.
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