A New Jersey woman was sentenced to 25 years in prison for shooting and dismembering a man after pleading guilty in December 2024 to aggravated manslaughter for his death.

Elizabeth Mascarelli was sentenced to 25 years in prison for shooting and dismembering Kerry Rollason after pleading guilty in December to aggravated manslaughter for his death. (Court TV)
Elizabeth Mascarelli, 29, offered an apology to 56-year-old Kerry Rollason’s loved ones seated in the audience at her sentencing hearing Friday.
“Nothing can justify what happened that day,” Mascarelli said. “Nothing can truly describe the way I feel inside about this situation. The only thing I can say is that I’m sorry.”
Speaking for Rollason’s family, Assistant Prosecutor Julie Peterson said the “horrific facts” of the case would forever “deprive” them of closure. “They are not satisfied that she will ever understand the gravity of her actions,” Peterson said.
Mascarelli was living in Rollason’s Toms River home with three other people on July 3, 2024, when prosecutors believe Rollason was killed. Mascarelli and her housemates were dealing and using illegal substances, Peterson said.
An investigation revealed Mascarelli shot Rollason three times, went to McDonald’s with her housemates, then returned to the house and cut up Rollason’s body with their help, Peterson said. Rollason’s remains were found in plastic bags on July 12 on property in neighboring Jackson Township with evidence including a hatchet, the prosecutor said.
A photo was found on Mascarelli’s phone with a hatchet in his chest, Peterson said, describing it as a “trophy photo” that Mascarelli “seemed to be proud of.”
“Frankly, the facts are like the plot of a horror movie,” Peterson said. “One has to suspend themselves from reality to accept that something so gruesome, so horrific and inhumane, could happen right here in Toms River in Ocean County, New Jersey.”
Mascarelli was arrested on July 5, 2024, after a law enforcement standoff at Rollason’s home. Investigators didn’t know at the time that Rollason was dead — law enforcement had shown up at the house looking for another person, Maxwell Johnston, who was a suspect in his girlfriend’s murder. During the standoff, the prosecutor said Mascarelli and Johnston used social media to share images and videos of themselves engaging in sexual activity and of Mascarelli kissing and licking Johnston’s firearm.
The investigation revealed that Mascarelli invited Johnston into Rollason’s home knowing he was a fugitive for the murder of girlfriend Gabriella Caroleo, Peterson said. Mascarelli acknowledged Caroleo in her statement, saying she felt “regret” and “sorrow” for her and her family.
Mascarelli and Johnston conspired to kill Rollason, according to the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office, and get rid of his body with the help of the others living in the home. Investigators determined that Danielle Bolstad and Jared Krysiak helped dismember Rollason’s body, and that Mascarelli, Bolstad, Krysiak and Jared Palumbo helped dispose of the body. Bolstad and Krysiak pleaded guilty to desecration of human remains and Palumbo pleaded guilty to hindering apprehension.
Johnston killed himself in Rollason’s house before law enforcement made contact with him, according to the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office.
Mascarelli’s lawyer said in Friday’s sentencing that Johnston held Mascarelli and others captive in the home, threatening them with a firearm.
“I do not mean to suggest that even the horrible and coercive circumstances created by Maxwell Johnston at the Rollason house justify my client’s conduct,” the defense attorney said. “I simply suggest, Judge, that before you impose sentence in this case that you consider that in what is certainly an unusual case, an ugly case … Elizabeth Mascarelli is also a victim.”
In issuing his sentence, Ocean County Superior Court Judge Guy P. Ryan noted he had encountered Mascarelli before in an unrelated drug case. He sentenced her to jail time in 2022 for an offense that she was on probation for when she killed Rollason.
“Probationary treatment today is often designed to allow someone to obtain substance abuse treatment in order to be able to hopefully get clean and stay clean. But therein lies the problem with always treating these drug offenses as non-violent offenses that allow early release and lenient probationary terms until they become violent. And the defendant’s use of drugs certainly didn’t prevent her from acting recklessly under circumstances manifesting an indifference to human life,” the judge said.
Ryan said it was to Mascarelli’s credit that she pleaded guilty so soon after being charged, sparing the victim’s family the ordeal of a trial. Ultimately, he found it did not serve as a factor that warranted leniency in sentencing given the nature of the crime and her extensive criminal history.
“It would be unfair to the public, the victims, and society,” Ryan said. “Therefore, I sentence her to 25 years.”
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