Within Mallove
Was Mallove's Robbery Scene Deliberately Staged?
Witness accounts indicate Mallove's property and van may have been taken after the assault to make the killing look like a robbery.
On this page
- Why robbery was the early working theory
- Accounts that theft followed the assault
- How staging changes the likely motive
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Introduction
The idea that Eugene Mallove died in a straightforward robbery rests heavily on what the crime scene looked like in the first hours after his killing: his green minivan had disappeared, along with his wallet and other personal property. Norwich police therefore had an obvious reason to investigate robbery. The van was found the following day in a Foxwoods Casino employee car park, reinforcing that initial impression.[Eugene Mallove]eugenemallove.comEugene Mallove Press Releases on Mallove InvestigationEugene MallovePress Releases on Mallove InvestigationJanuary 24, 2005…
Later evidence substantially changed the meaning of those missing possessions. The Connecticut Appellate Court’s 2025 account of the case records evidence that Chad Schaffer said he and Mozzelle Brown assaulted Mallove and then took his possessions specifically to stage the attack as a robbery. Candace Foster also admitted driving Mallove’s van to Foxwoods and said Schaffer took several of Mallove’s belongings.[Justia Law]law.justia.comJustia LawBrown v. Commissioner of Correction:: 2025:: Connecticut Appellate Court Decisions:: Connecticut Case Law:: Connecticut Law…
That distinction is important when Mallove’s death is discussed as a possible killing connected with unconventional-energy research. A staged robbery does mean the apparent robbery motive may have been misleading. It does not, however, establish a professional assassination. The documented alternative developed by investigators was much more local: a confrontation involving people connected with tenants whom Mallove had recently evicted.
Why robbery was the early working theory
The initial robbery interpretation was not invented retrospectively. Contemporary police statements show that investigators genuinely treated Mallove’s missing property as potentially important evidence.
Mallove was killed on 14 May 2004 at 119 Salem Turnpike in Norwich, Connecticut, where he was clearing out a rental property. Norwich police subsequently published a list of property believed to have been taken during the crime: his wallet and credit cards, wedding ring, mobile phone, digital camera and camera case. His minivan was also missing. Police said the vehicle was later recovered in an employee car park at Foxwoods.[Eugene Mallove]eugenemallove.comEugene Mallove Press Releases on Mallove InvestigationEugene MallovePress Releases on Mallove InvestigationJanuary 24, 2005…
Contemporary reporting consequently described the killing as a suspected robbery. Reports preserved from the Norwich Bulletin stated that police believed robbery was likely because the van and other items had been taken; investigators were seeking the missing objects and conducting forensic examinations of evidence from the scene and vehicle.[Great Dreams]greatdreams.comGreat Dreams Dr. Eugene MalloveGreat DreamsDr. Eugene Mallove - Cold Fusion ExpertMay 15, 2004…
This helps explain why the early theory was persuasive. An observer encountering the case in 2004 would have seen several familiar signs of a robbery-related homicide:
- the victim had been violently assaulted;
- his wallet and other portable possessions were missing;
- his vehicle had been taken;
- the vehicle was abandoned away from the murder scene; and
- police were publicly trying to trace the stolen property.[Eugene Mallove]eugenemallove.comEugene Mallove Press Releases on Mallove InvestigationEugene MallovePress Releases on Mallove InvestigationJanuary 24, 2005…
The apparent robbery also influenced early speculation about competing motives. A May 2004 update from the Paradigm Research Group, an organisation interested in UFO disclosure and unconventional-energy questions, noted Mallove’s connections with alternative-energy research but acknowledged that the initial police indications pointed towards a robbery and assault.[Paradigm Research Group]paradigmresearchgroup.orgParadigm Research Group PRG UpdatesParadigm Research GroupPRG UpdatesJuly 8, 2013…
The crucial problem is that the missing property could establish that theft occurred without establishing why it occurred. If valuables were taken only after the decisive assault, robbery could have been a concealment mechanism rather than the original reason for the confrontation.
Accounts that theft followed the assault
The later investigation produced precisely that alternative sequence.
According to the factual history recited by the Connecticut Appellate Court in Brown v. Commissioner of Correction, Mallove had evicted Roy and Patricia Anderson from the Salem Turnpike property approximately a month before his death. Schaffer, Patricia Anderson’s son, and Foster had also lived there. The court records that a later witness, Keishon Dullivan, told police that Schaffer had said he assaulted Mallove with Brown and that they took Mallove’s possessions to stage the attack as a robbery.[Justia Law]law.justia.comJustia LawBrown v. Commissioner of Correction:: 2025:: Connecticut Appellate Court Decisions:: Connecticut Case Law:: Connecticut Law…
Foster’s evidence added a concrete explanation for one of the most conspicuous signs of robbery. The appellate record says that in her final police statement she admitted participating in the violence and said that she drove Mallove’s van and parked it at Foxwoods, while Schaffer took several of Mallove’s possessions.[Justia Law]law.justia.comJustia LawBrown v. Commissioner of Correction:: 2025:: Connecticut Appellate Court Decisions:: Connecticut Case Law:: Connecticut Law…
That is significant because the abandoned van had been one of the strongest early clues pointing towards robbery. The vehicle was not merely reported missing: the court confirms that it was discovered in the Foxwoods employee car park on 15 May.[Justia Law]law.justia.comJustia LawBrown v. Commissioner of Correction:: 2025:: Connecticut Appellate Court Decisions:: Connecticut Case Law:: Connecticut Law… If Foster’s account is accepted, an apparently independent robbery clue becomes part of the alleged post-assault staging.
Reporting on Foster’s 2010 testimony described an even more disturbing chronology. Accounts of the evidentiary hearing said Mallove had already been badly beaten when the assailants returned to the property with the stated purpose of making the incident resemble a robbery. According to those reports, Mallove was still alive when they returned.[New Energy Times]newenergytimes.comNew Energy TimesNew Energy Times - Issue #35: Science and Energy NewsJuly 30, 2010…
Journalist David Kushner’s later reconstruction, based partly on interviews with investigator James Curtis, gives the same basic sequence. Schaffer told investigators that he and Brown had gone to the house after Schaffer’s mother contacted him about belongings from the recently vacated property. Schaffer admitted punching Mallove but attributed the most serious violence to Brown. According to Curtis’s reconstruction, the men subsequently collected Foster and returned to take Mallove’s vehicle in an attempt to make the scene resemble a robbery.[David Kushner]davidkushner.comDavid Kushner The Coldest Case – David KushnerDavid KushnerThe Coldest Case – David KushnerJuly 7, 2016…
The prosecution history gives the robbery component additional legal weight, although it does not independently prove every detail of Foster’s account. In 2012, Schaffer entered an Alford plea to first-degree manslaughter and third-degree robbery. The 2025 appellate decision confirms those offences and records Foster’s later guilty pleas to hindering prosecution and tampering with physical evidence.[Justia Law]law.justia.comJustia LawBrown v. Commissioner of Correction:: 2025:: Connecticut Appellate Court Decisions:: Connecticut Case Law:: Connecticut Law…
Taken together, these sources support a narrower proposition than some accounts imply: there is substantial case-record evidence that at least some of the theft was undertaken after the violence and was intended to alter how investigators interpreted the crime.
The staging evidence has important limits
Calling the robbery “staged” should not turn a well-supported investigative theory into something more certain than the evidence allows.
Much of the detailed reconstruction depends on statements by participants or associates rather than a forensic recording of the sequence. A contemporary account of Schaffer’s 2010 probable-cause hearing noted that the prosecution relied heavily on statements rather than physical evidence and that no physical evidence directly linking Schaffer to the crime had been presented at that particular hearing. The same report highlighted unresolved questions about why the participants would return to the scene if their purpose was to protect themselves.[New Energy Times - News Site]news.newenergytimes.netNew Energy TimesNews SiteMallove Murder Case Moves Along – New Energy Times – News Site…
Foster also had obvious credibility issues. The appellate record states that she initially provided an alibi for Schaffer, later gave police several different versions of events and ultimately admitted her own participation.[Justia Law]law.justia.comJustia LawBrown v. Commissioner of Correction:: 2025:: Connecticut Appellate Court Decisions:: Connecticut Case Law:: Connecticut Law… That history does not make her evidence worthless, but it means individual details should not automatically be treated as uncontested fact.
The caution became still more important after the Connecticut Appellate Court’s January 2025 decision concerning Brown. The court concluded that prosecutors had failed to disclose information indicating an informal understanding concerning possible consideration for Foster as a cooperating witness. It held that this information was material impeachment evidence and ordered Brown’s murder and conspiracy convictions vacated and a new trial granted.[Justia Law]law.justia.comJustia LawBrown v. Commissioner of Correction:: 2025:: Connecticut Appellate Court Decisions:: Connecticut Case Law:: Connecticut Law…
The ruling matters because Foster was an important prosecution witness. It gives legitimate grounds for treating her testimony critically. But the decision should not be misread as a judicial finding that the staged-robbery account was fabricated, or that Mallove’s scientific activities supplied the true motive. The appellate court addressed disclosure and witness-credibility issues under Brady v. Maryland; it did not replace the tenant-related account with a cold-fusion, UFO or antigravity explanation.[Justia Law]law.justia.comJustia LawBrown v. Commissioner of Correction:: 2025:: Connecticut Appellate Court Decisions:: Connecticut Case Law:: Connecticut Law…
There is also evidence for staging that did not originate solely with Foster. The appellate factual history separately records Dullivan’s statement that Schaffer said Mallove’s possessions were taken to stage a robbery.[Justia Law]law.justia.comJustia LawBrown v. Commissioner of Correction:: 2025:: Connecticut Appellate Court Decisions:: Connecticut Case Law:: Connecticut Law… Schaffer’s own criminal case ended with a plea encompassing both manslaughter and robbery. These points make it too simple either to accept Foster’s entire narrative unquestioningly or to discard the staging theory because her credibility was later challenged.
How staging changes the likely motive
The staged-robbery evidence changes the case in one important way: robbery and motive cannot safely be treated as synonyms.
If the later accounts are substantially correct, the sequence was not “people arrived intending to rob Mallove and killed him when the robbery went wrong”. Instead, the confrontation arose at the property Mallove was clearing after an eviction, violence occurred, and property was then taken so that investigators would infer a different kind of crime. The robbery was therefore at least partly a cover story created through physical actions at the scene.[Justia Law]law.justia.comJustia LawBrown v. Commissioner of Correction:: 2025:: Connecticut Appellate Court Decisions:: Connecticut Case Law:: Connecticut Law…
That finding can initially sound suggestive to readers approaching Mallove’s death through claims about suppression of cold fusion or other unconventional-energy research. If the apparent robbery was false, perhaps, the argument goes, some more consequential hidden motive must have existed.
The evidence does not support that leap.
A false robbery appearance establishes concealment of the circumstances of a killing, not the identity of a hidden sponsor or an exotic motive. The same investigative record that supplies the staging evidence also supplies a specific, ordinary reason for Schaffer to have been at the property: his family had recently been evicted, belongings were being cleared from the house, and Schaffer told investigators he went there after being contacted about those possessions.[Justia Law]law.justia.comJustia LawBrown v. Commissioner of Correction:: 2025:: Connecticut Appellate Court Decisions:: Connecticut Case Law:: Connecticut Law…
The staging theory therefore cuts in two directions. It weakens the original robbery-gone-wrong explanation, because later testimony suggested theft followed the assault. At the same time, it strengthens the importance of the landlord–tenant confrontation, because removing robbery as the initiating purpose leaves the documented dispute over the property and belongings as the immediate context connecting the participants to Mallove.
That distinction is especially important in assessing claims that Mallove belongs among researchers supposedly killed for work connected with UFOs, antigravity or unconventional energy. His violent death is real, the apparent robbery may indeed have been deliberately manufactured, and weaknesses in the prosecution of Brown are now part of the legal record. None of those facts, individually or together, supplies affirmative evidence that the staging was designed to conceal a scientifically motivated assassination.
The most evidence-based formulation is consequently narrower but more revealing: Mallove’s missing possessions and abandoned van initially made robbery look like the motive; later witness accounts and the criminal record indicate that theft may instead have been part of an effort to disguise a killing arising from a confrontation connected with the recently evicted occupants.[Justia Law]law.justia.comJustia LawBrown v. Commissioner of Correction:: 2025:: Connecticut Appellate Court Decisions:: Connecticut Case Law:: Connecticut Law…
What the staged robbery actually establishes
The staged-robbery theory is one of the most useful pieces of the Mallove case precisely because it separates appearance from motive without requiring speculation.
The early crime scene gave police rational grounds to suspect robbery. Later evidence provided a different interpretation of those same clues: Mallove’s van and possessions were not necessarily evidence of what brought the assailants to him, but potentially evidence of what they wanted investigators to believe afterwards. The Connecticut appellate record explicitly preserves the allegation that property was taken to stage the attack and identifies Foster as the person who said she drove the van to Foxwoods.[Justia Law]law.justia.comJustia LawBrown v. Commissioner of Correction:: 2025:: Connecticut Appellate Court Decisions:: Connecticut Case Law:: Connecticut Law…
There remains reason for caution about the precise reconstruction. Foster changed her story, was herself implicated in the crime, and her treatment as a cooperating witness became the basis of the serious disclosure violation that led to Brown’s convictions being vacated in 2025.[Justia Law]law.justia.comJustia LawBrown v. Commissioner of Correction:: 2025:: Connecticut Appellate Court Decisions:: Connecticut Case Law:: Connecticut Law… Those problems make careful attribution essential.
They do not, however, convert the resulting uncertainty into evidence for a suppression conspiracy. The strongest documented reading is that the apparent robbery may have been an attempted misdirection following violence connected to the former tenants and their property. In other words, the staging theory genuinely challenges the earliest account of how the crime began, while the available evidence still points towards a local dispute rather than Mallove’s unconventional-energy advocacy as the reason he was attacked.
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Endnotes
1.
Source: law.justia.com
Link:https://law.justia.com/cases/connecticut/court-of-appeals/2025/ac46658.html
Source snippet
Justia LawBrown v. Commissioner of Correction:: 2025:: Connecticut Appellate Court Decisions:: Connecticut Case Law:: Connecticut Law...
2.
Source: news.newenergytimes.net
Title: New Energy Times
Link:https://news.newenergytimes.net/2010/06/24/mallove-murder-case-plods-along/
Source snippet
News SiteMallove Murder Case Moves Along – New Energy Times – News Site...
3.
Source: youtube.com
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2OxNZEyKGs
Source snippet
Arrest made in 2004 Norwich murder of scientist...
4.
Source: eugenemallove.com
Title: Eugene Mallove Press Releases on Mallove Investigation
Link:https://www.eugenemallove.com/em_investigation.html
Source snippet
Eugene MallovePress Releases on Mallove InvestigationJanuary 24, 2005...
Published: January 24, 2005
5.
Source: greatdreams.com
Title: Great Dreams Dr. Eugene Mallove
Link:https://www.greatdreams.com/mallove.htm
Source snippet
Great DreamsDr. Eugene [Mallove - Cold Fusion]({{ 'cold-fusion-timing/' | relative_url }}) ExpertMay 15, 2004...
Published: May 15, 2004
6.
Source: paradigmresearchgroup.org
Title: Paradigm Research Group PRG Updates
Link:https://www.paradigmresearchgroup.org/Press_Releases/Updates.html
Source snippet
Paradigm Research GroupPRG UpdatesJuly 8, 2013...
Published: July 8, 2013
7.
Source: newenergytimes.com
Link:https://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2010/35/3524scienceenergynews.shtml
Source snippet
New Energy TimesNew Energy Times - Issue #35: Science and Energy NewsJuly 30, 2010...
Published: July 30, 2010
8.
Source: davidkushner.com
Title: David Kushner The Coldest Case – David Kushner
Link:https://davidkushner.com/article/the-coldest-case/
Source snippet
David KushnerThe Coldest Case – David KushnerJuly 7, 2016...
Published: July 7, 2016
9.
Source: oxygen.com
Title: Eugene Mallove, Scientist, Murdered After Housing Dispute
Link:https://www.oxygen.com/an-unexpected-killer/crime-news/eugene-mallove-scientist-murdered-after-housing-dispute
10.
Source: uapmurders.com
Link:https://uapmurders.com/uaps/Details/Eugene_Mallove/
11.
Source: eugenemallove.com
Link:https://www.eugenemallove.com/emwords_rothwell.html
12.
Source: Wikipedia
Title: Eugene Mallove
Link:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Mallove
Additional References
13.
Source: concordmonitor.com
Title: End of an era for cold fusion journal Infinite Energy
Link:https://www.concordmonitor.com/2026/07/27/infinite-energy-magazine-disappears-cold-fusion-nh-eugene-mallove/
Source snippet
His convictions never wavered, even though nothing ever came of cold fusion. (Admittedly, hot fusion isn’t going great guns eit...
14.
Source: listorati.com
Title: leading scientists mysterious ends 2000s
Link:https://listorati.com/leading-scientists-mysterious-ends-2000s/
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Adding another twist, his girlfriend Tamara Rallo—who was about to be arrested for involvement—was found dead shortly thereafter. Authori...
15.
Source: oregonlegislature.gov
Link:https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/ors/anc001.html
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Source: casemine.com
Link:https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/6799af1f03415e3e7f4ad6d8
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Brown v. Comm'r of Corr. | AC 46658 | Conn. App. Ct. | Judgment | Law | CaseMine...
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Source: directv.com
Link:https://www.directv.com/guide/EPISODE/Crime-Expos-With-Nancy-ODell-Murder-of-Fabio-Sementilli-ef5b9aab-64ef-e22b-6ed7-90f54c622eb2
18.
Source: thecinemaholic.com
Link:https://thecinemaholic.com/dr-eugene-mallove-murder-where-are-candace-foster-chad-schaffer-and-mozzelle-brown-now/
19.
Source: slideshare.net
Link:https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/obama-suspicious-[death-lists
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Source: instagram.com
Link:https://www.instagram.com/p/DIQ-pAFMSQZ/
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Source: projectcamelot.org
Link:https://projectcamelot.org/mallove.html