POMEROY, Ohio (Court TV) — A man apologized in court Friday as he admitted to raping and killing a woman in his Amish community.
Samuel Hochstetler appears in court for a hearing on Sept. 23, 2025. (Court TV)
Samuel Hochstetler, 19, pleaded guilty to aggravated murder as part of an agreement with prosecutors to avoid a trial scheduled to begin on Monday. Hochstetler admitted to killing Rosanna Kinsinger, who was found dead inside the trailer where she lived in March 2025.
Prosecutor James Stanley said that on the day Kinsinger was last seen alive, she had been working with the defendant and others to build a greenhouse. “The defendant and Rosanna were not courting, they were not dating, they were not together, they were not seeing each other, they were not engaged in a casual sexual relationship,” Stanley said. In fact, friends testified that Kinsinger didn’t particularly like Hochstetler. Those who last saw the pair on March 12, 2025, said they saw “the defendant acting in a manner that was showing off toward Rosanna or attempting to flirt with Rosanna.”
The next day, friends and neighbors went to check on the victim when she failed to show up at work or other activities. Inside her trailer was a goat; Stanley said the animal likely wandered in through the back door that was left open. Further inside, the group looking for Kinsinger found her nude, facedown and bent over her bed.
Gathered outside, the elders in the community puzzled over who to call and settled on 911. They also dispatched a group to Kinsinger’s parents’ home, 2 miles away. “When they arrived,” Stanley said, “the defendant took it upon himself to be the one to tell Rosanna’s father that Rosanna had died.”
Stanley said Hochstetler didn’t stop there. “The State thinks that aside from raping and murdering Rosanna, perhaps the most cruel thing that he did happened next when he volunteered to go to the Kinsinger farm to help them with their chores and to prepare the barn for her funeral,” Stanley said. “He not only helped, but he was a welcome guest in their home. And he wasn’t just a guest during the day; he was a guest during the night and spent the night Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday night after he had killed Rosanna. Rosanna’s parents and siblings had no idea that they had welcomed her murderer into their home, and that he was right there with them the entire time that they mourned her loss.”
Investigators determined that Kinsinger had been the victim of a violent sexual assault and that she had died during the attack. “We believe the evidence would show that the defendant either held her face in the blankets or covered her face with the blankets with such force that he dislodged her lower dentures,” Stanley said, adding that Hochstetler also pressed Kinsinger’s torso to the point that she was unable to breathe.
Hochstetler’s attorney conceded that the defendant had killed the victim, but said the smothering was more a “result of his lack of experience,” suggesting it was accidental. “In speaking with him, he has a great amount of remorse and sorrow, but what took place on March 12, 2025, was never his intention.”
While Stanley said in court on Friday that he believed the state’s case was strong, he admitted that part of the decision to offer the defendant a plea deal was because of a prior ruling that Hochstetler’s confession would not be admissible at trial. “The State is hedging its bets as far as what could possibly happen at trial,” Stanley explained. “That’s why we’re making this offer for him to plead guilty.”
“I’m sorry for everything I did. I wish I could go back to those days and make a different life,” Hochstetler said in a brief address to the court. “I don’t know how to fully express how sorry I am for all this.”
Judge Linda Warner sentenced Hochstetler to life in prison; he will be eligible for parole after 25 years. If he is ever released, Hochstetler will have to register as a sex offender.
