By Kathryn Reed

Premeditation. That was the sticking point for jurors in the Ulysses Roberson trial. Without being able to say he killed his son with forethought, the panel on Monday morning convicted Roberson of second-degree murder.

The former South Lake Tahoe resident will be sentenced Jan. 6. He could get 15 years to life for killing his 4-year-old son Alexander Olive. Olive’s body has never been found.

Ulysses Roberson

“We’re very satisfied with the outcome and thankful the family and the community can have some resolution on this after so long,” FBI agent Chris Campion said.

Campion worked this case for years. The boy was killed in either December 1985 or January 1986.

Chris Cefalu was one of six alternates for the 12-member jury. Until the last day of closing arguments on Nov. 30 he thought his job was done because the alternates would not be part of the deliberations. One of the female jurors was dismissed and he had more work to do regarding the case.

“We got to the point (Monday morning) where everyone gave their opinion about what charge was appropriate,” Cefalu said. “It got to the point where we couldn’t prove first degree and then we decided murder in the second degree because we agreed it was murder.”

Cefalu had high praise for jury foreman Charles Emmett and El Dorado County Superior Court Judge Suzanne Kingsbury.

“The nature of the case was circumstantial mostly. That is a tough concept,” Cefalu said.

Keith Cooney was an alternate the entire time on the case that started in early October.

“I found some of the testimony, pictures and evidence pretty disturbing,” Cooney said. “There were times when I was silently screaming at the witnesses on the stand — ‘how can you walk into a room and see a child hanging upside down and not do anything’.”

His voice fills with disgust thinking about how the boy’s mother, Judy Olive (who also goes by Ruby and Rosemary), knew about it and did nothing but allow her son to be further tortured by Roberson.

It came out during the trial that Roberson hated his son for being half white. But it’s unclear how he justified sleeping with a white woman.

Plenty of blame can go around in the case. But those close to the case say it was eerie how Roberson never showed remorse.