Death of a Newsman – The Joel M. Rose N8JR incident. A popular regional
broadcaster, radio engineer and pilot, Joel Rose *1936-2000* of Brecksville,Ohio. Our subject a family man was a well known ham operator, public servant,experimenter and much more. He was earlier W8GOE & N8JR - Buried on
page six of the Plain Dealer’s Metro section 3 Aug 2000 “A search warrant wasserved yesterday at the home of former WEWS Morning Exchange Personality.”
Mr Rose was under investigation for a dozen assaults via mail and telephone.
The blistering wit was under fire from his own media and the Cleveland PoliceDepartment. The warrant was a five page probable cause affidavit.
Then Joel left several letters behind expressing his fondness for his family and the fact he wasinnocent of charges going to be laid against him in the papers and by Cleveland Police. Joel expiredwith a self inflicted gun shot wound Aug 4th 2000 near his home. The surrounding case was hard tobelieve against this man. The Brecksville Police discovered his body.
Joel was a WEWS-TV staple of the Morning Exchange, for the better part of two decades. Rose left
TV in 1983 to run a marketing business. On a typical day 2/3 of all TV sets were tuned into theMorning Exchange! Joel wore a lot of hats, his TV shows, talk radio WERE/WJW and WAI-TV29
News. He knew how to get the public excited about a subject. He returned briefly in the 90s.
It unravels, material of a explicit nature began being sent through the mails to dozens ofunsuspecting women. It continued for a period and Cleveland PD was handling an open case. Thenas a suspect the police nailing down Joel Rose, then the investigators began to ask for DNA andsearching his home for evidence, his computer equipment and other material were removed. Not
much was spoken about sexual explicit audio tapes were also in some of the mailings. Cleveland PD
made attempts go forward with that tape evidence.
Amazon the supplier of the tapes in question, the large internet service would not turn over
information to ascertain who were shipped the explicit tapes during the period., calling it a fishingexpedition. The police investigators were attempting to learn who in the 30 zip codes in the region
purchased the Amazon tapes. In the entire investigation the typewriter used in the case did not matchthe Rose typewriter in his home.
After the suicide, in April of 2001 the case was closed but Investigators say the former Cleveland
Broadcaster, who expired in August of 2000 remains a chief suspect in the serial harassment ofdozens of women. There was no DNA or any other evidence against N8JR. Earlier at the requestof Joel’s wife of 28 years Lois, Brecksville’s police and fire departments have established the Joel
Rose Memorial Fund. The fund will benefit the city’s safety forces.
I worked Joel on the ARRL CW nets many times and he had a cordial and welcome spirit. Thosethat knew him the closest say he was innocent. Yet, the harassment stopped upon the start of theinvestigation and has not continued since.
Rose’s cooperation with public safety was monumental, he had friends in the public safety realm andcountless hours in cooperation with their activities amalgamated into ham radio activities. One ofthe most memorable air shows that Pat and I’ve attended was the Lorain County Air Show in the 90s– yes, our subject Joel Rose was at the mike all day announcing faithfully the events! I shall neverforget one of the Channel 5 long time news personalities was Dorothy Fuldheim, at times a caustic
appearing senior and it seemed she appreciated Joel and got along with him best on those news sets!
W8SU 2007