An Alameda County Sheriff's Office deputy moves through a crime scene as she photographs it in San Leandro, California on Saturday, November 11, 2023. (Dylan Bouscher/Bay Area News Group)
OAKLAND — A jury will soon decide the fate of a Pleasanton man accused of murdering his fiancée inside their shared apartment, dismembering her body with power tools, and dumping her body before simply continuing on with his life.
Joseph Roberts, 43, was once a darling of those who oppose the #MeToo Movement after he penned an op-ed about being falsely accused of sexual assault. Today, he’s on trial for allegedly murdering 27-year-old Rachel “Imani” Buckner, whose mangled torso was found along the Alameda Shoreline last July.
“Look at Imani’s body,” Deputy District Attorney Colleen Clark told jurors during her closing argument Monday, if they have any doubt that Buckner suffered a violent death. “That is the body of a murder victim. The way he dismembered her, the way he cut her body.”
Clark’s lengthy argument painted a picture of an abusive relationship with escalating violence that ended with a homicide she admits she can’t fully describe.
Buckner’s head has never been found and her torso provided forensic examiners with no insight into exactly how she died, though her death was ruled a homicide. That fact has been seized on by Roberts’ lawyers, who argue that without a specific cause of death there can be no conviction of murder.
But Clark saved some of her harshest words for the Pleasanton police department, who were called to the home numerous times by neighbors, reporting loud screams, bangs, thumps, and other obvious signs of domestic violence. The officers who responded regularly failed to act, letting Roberts get away with obvious lies, and allowed themselves to be “charmed” by a “master manipulator,” Clark said.
“The police let him get away with (lying),” Clark said, referring to a time where Roberts claimed two cellphones in the apartment were his, moments after saying one belonged to Buckner. “They’re up there chit chatting, laughing, talking to him about golf, and allowing him to continue to abuse Imani.”
On another occasion, Roberts claimed Buckner was showering when the police arrived, and the officers told them they would leave if she appeared and told them everything was ok. Roberts closed the door, and a fully clothed and dry Buckner came out roughly 30 seconds later, then told them in a subdued manner that she was ok. The officers left, having effectively instructed Roberts “how to get away with further abuse to Imani,” Clark said.
The pathway to a murder verdict, per Clark, requires delving into the utterly grotesque evidence that Roberts dismembered her body in their Pleasanton apartment and dumped her torso in Alameda. A bone fragment containing Buckner’s DNA was found in their bath drain, near large bottles of cleaning chemicals, and the body itself contained partial cuts from “false starts” where Roberts’ saw snagged on a bone, Clark said.
Clark also questioned by Roberts would strip and dispose of carpets in the apartment, noting the couple owed $80,000 in back rent and fines, and was on the verge of being evicted.
Phone records show Roberts traveled to Alameda near the area where Buckner’s torso was found, Clark said. Later, Roberts used Buckner’s phone to quit her job so that their boss at JoAnn Fabrics wouldn’t become alerted to Buckner’s disappearance. But when he did so, he used a particular word, “assignment,” which Buckner had never used to describe her job before, but Roberts had, Clark said.
“The defendant’s phone often betrayed him and helped solidify his guilt in this case,” she said.
Buckner and Roberts met at Golden Gate University as aspiring lawyers, but after falling in love with him, Buckner began cutting off friends and family, at Roberts’ behest, Clark said. By July 14, 2023 — the day prosecutors believe she was killed — there was no one in her life besides Roberts.
During their relationship, Roberts penned an op-ed for USA Today, decrying the #MeToo movement by saying that he’d been falsely accused of sexual assault. Betsy DeVos, the former U.S. Secretary of Education under President Trump, used Roberts as an example as she championed rolling back Obama-era protections for alleged victims of sexual assault on college campuses. Roberts was elected in 2020 to serve as a delegate in the San Francisco Republican County Central Committee, and openly talked about how sorority members at Savannah State University in Georgia wrongly accused him of sexual harassment.
Jurors are expected to begin deliberations on Thursday.
Check back for updates
Originally published at Nate Gartrell, Jakob Rodgers