Man Indicted in Death of Bride at Sea

A federal grand jury today indicted a Santa Monica man for second-degree murder in the death of his bride of nine days, who went overboard from their honeymoon cruise ship last month.

Scott Robin Roston, 36, faces the federal charge in the death of Karen Waltz Roston, 26, a Florida-born licensed masseuse whose body was pulled from the sea southwest of San Diego on Feb. 13, less than 12 hours after her new husband reported her overboard from the cruise ship “Stardancer.”

Roston, an ex-Navy corpsman who has a degree from a Georgia chiropractic college, first said a wind blew his wife overboard from the ship’s jogging track. But he later blamed Israeli agents for her death.

Roston told The Times that agents first drugged him and then killed her to frame him for the crime because of his critical 1987 “vanity” book, “Nightmare in Israel.” The book accuses Israel of human rights violations, detailing what Roston called his “torture” during his 14 months living in Israel, where, he says, he was “framed” on a phony charge by the “Israeli Mafia.”

The U.S. attorney’s office is still studying an extradition request from the Bahamian government in the case, since the cruise ship was Bahamian-registered.