THE UNSOLVED: New clue reignites Ocoee case

Editor’s note: This is the next in an ongoing series on unsolved crime cases in West Orange.

Almost 32 years to the exact date Stephen Alan Rosenblum went missing in May 1992, the Ocoee Police Department had a break in the mysterious case.

On May 14, 2024, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement contacted Ocoee Police Department’s Michelle Grogan, current detective on the case, with news of a discovery on a hit on fingerprints found on Rosenblum’s discovered missing vehicle in West Virginia.

The prints came back to a career criminal who lived in the area where the vehicle was discovered.  

Grogan, who retired this year but has returned to the department to work on exclusively cold cases, now is working with West Virginia’s state agencies and local law enforcement to track down the identified criminal and/or his family.   

She has been in contact with Rosenblum’s family, and they are hoping to discover more answers as to what happened to him. 

“There’s somebody who is somewhere thinking about these missing people,” Grogan said. “This is somebody’s family. It’s somebody’s person. We never forget them — no matter how much time has passed.”

MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE 

Ocoee resident Rosenblum, 38 at the time, was last seen by his family on May 1, 1992. He now would be 70 years old.

Rosenblum had twin sons, a mother and an ex-wife who also lived in the area.

He had a drinking problem and worked odd jobs, his most recent at a local pizzeria. However, despite his substance abuse issues, the family said Rosenblum always stayed in the Ocoee and Winter Garden areas so he could be close to his sons.

Grogan said Rosenblum and his ex-wife were amicable. 

“She said he had regular visits,” Grogan said. “He could come to her house anytime he wanted. He would also show up at the boys’ baseball games, doctor’s visits and different family events.”

On May 20, 1992, the ex-wife contacted the Ocoee PD and spoke with Ted Silberstein, the previous detective on the case. She stated it was unusual for Rosenblum not to see their sons, as she allowed him to see them regularly. 

She completed a missing person report, and Rosenblum was entered into the National Crime Information Center.

“He was a couch surfer and lived at different homes, but he always stayed in the area, because his car wasn’t the best and so he could see his sons,” Grogan said. “He didn’t show up, and they didn’t hear from him for two weeks. The ex-wife also had a phone card she gave him, and she realized he hadn’t been using the minutes on the card. They knew something was wrong.”

The Ocoee PD determined Rosenblum was last seen at his job at the pizzeria two weeks prior. He never arrived to pick up his last paycheck.

Rosenblum is described as being a white male about 6 feet tall and weighing about 145 pounds. He has blond/strawberry hair and blue eyes.

Rosenblum has several distinctive physical features, including webbed fingers, buckled and thick fingernails, ribs previously broken, severe psoriasis covering his back, rotten and broken teeth, and a scar on his abdomen. 

VEHICLE DISCOVERY

On June 4, 1992, Silberstein was contacted by the Charleston Police Department in West Virginia, who advised Rosenblum’s vehicle had been recovered in a remote area of Clendenin in Kanawha County.

Courtesy photo

This location was not an area that was easily accessible, and the department found it suspicious a vehicle was found there. It was an old logging road not visible from the roadway. 

“The area wasn’t even a place where people who lived around there went,” Grogan said. “Rosenblum’s ex-wife, friends and boss all said they were not aware of him knowing anyone in West Virginia.”

The silver and black 1987 Hyundai was found to have stolen Texas tags both on and inside the vehicle — Texas is a two-tag state. The tags belonged to a male with a 1978 Ford F-150 who had reported the stolen vehicle and tags on May 24, 1992.

Rosenblum’s ex-wife was able to identify items found in the vehicle, including a sleeping bag, two flannel shirts and a quilt a family relative had made for him.

Because West Virginia law enforcement thought they had found a stolen vehicle, they searched for fingerprints and were able to obtain three latent prints, including one from the interior rearview mirror. 

The prints were sent to FDLE on July 13, 1992, but did not come back to a person. 

After the NamUs Unidentified Persons database was created in 2007, Rosenblum was entered into the system Oct. 14, 2022.

PIECE BY PIECE

Although Grogan retired Jan. 31, she was asked to come back and work on her passion: Ocoee PD’s cold cases, including the long-term missing person’s cases. 

The first thing she did was sit down with the department’s evidence specialist, and they went through all of the evidence and case files. 

The pair verified they still had the latent lifts from the vehicle, and they resubmitted them to the FDLE and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

As Grogan waited on the results, she entered Rosenblum’s updated information into the NamUs system.

She also entered him into the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, a national database run by the FBI that allows law enforcement agencies to share information about unsolved homicides, missing persons and unidentified human remains. 

That’s when she received the call about the hit on the prints.

“They actually called us and sent the report via email,” Grogan said. “But, they were so excited they wanted to tell someone in person.” 

Grogan said the Ocoee PD is not yet ready to release the name of the criminal to whom the fingerprints belong. He has not yet been confirmed to still be alive.

She said the department has unidentified remains from 2016 that they are working with multiple organizations to possibly identify. They also are checking with medical examiners in West Virginia to see if there are any other unidentified remains that have been found. 

“I have a lot of different theories, but he’s a dad, and he loved those boys,” Grogan said. “He worked at a place where he was probably making less than minimum wage, and maybe somebody came along and offered him a work opportunity that he felt he couldn’t turn down to help better support himself and his kids.”