Rosanne Boyland is a martyr to some—a lawless rioter to others. To her family, she was a caring person who was sucked into QAnon. A year after her death at the U.S. Capitol, AymanM and preeti_varathan investigate how she will be remembered:
January 6 marks the first anniversary of the violent riots at the U.S. Capitol in which bands of pro-Trump insurgents tried and failed to halt the certification of the election of President Joe Biden. In December, MSNBC host Ayman Mohyeldin, a sometimewhich explored the little-known story of Rosanne Boyland, one of at least five people who died in connection with the rampage. This story expands on the MSNBC team’s extensive reporting.
That day, intense fighting broke out on the west front of the Capitol. It’s the side of the congressional complex that has tiered plazas and where, in just weeks, Joe Biden would be inaugurated. Police had been deploying reinforcements to shore up the perimeter, but they would not be able to hold that ground as waves of rioters continued to push on, some of them trying to gain access to a tunnel leading directly into the building.
At the bottom of that pile, it turned out, was Boyland, wearing a black sweatshirt and ripped jeans. She was motionless. Moments later, a man in a bright blue hoodie screamed, “She’s dead! She’s dead!” Then he shouted, “Rosanne! Rosanne! Rosanne!” Justin Cave and I both went to North Cobb High. We played varsity soccer together. It was the same school Rosanne Boyland attended, though she was a few years younger than us.
But the family began to worry as they saw what was happening on their screens. They began seeing scenes of fighting around the Capitol. Lonna texted Rosanne, “You all good?” She got no response. But then he decided to go off script: “It’s my own personal belief that the president’s words incited a riot that killed four of his biggest fans last night and I believe that we should invoke the 25th Amendment at this time.”
Naturally, the first person the Boylands wanted to speak to following Rosanne’s death was Justin Winchell. And in those devastating first weeks, he would become central to the family’s search for answers into what happened outside the Capitol entrance. One starting point for the Boylands was Rosanne’s phone. Some of those answers may be on it but it’s hard to know definitively since the phone is locked and the family has been unsuccessful in getting it unlocked. What the family does know, however, is that Justin Winchell and Rosanne had started hanging out the year before.
One of the last people to speak to him publicly was a local TV reporter named Zac Summers. Summers connected with Winchell through one of Rosanne’s friends; part of that interview aired on the night of January 7. At our request, Summers and the CBS affiliate in Atlanta agreed to let us listen to the full, unedited 20-minute interview, which proved to be revealing.
Without speaking to Justin Winchell, we were unable to get further information about his relationship with Rosanne, or whether he played any role in her radicalization. But through numerous interviews with the Boylands, and by combing through Rosanne’s diary, text messages, social media posts, and family group chats, we began to put together a composite of what Rosanne came to believe—in her own words and thoughts.
Over the phone, Rosanne described how she had spent 14 hours or so ricocheting from one conspiracy theory to another, viewing video after video. In the process, she said, she had stumbled acrossa slick, well-produced film that has become a popular entry point for QAnon believers. It’s directed by a longtime Hollywood stuntman who suffers an injury while working on set.
Rosanne, who had a long arrest record, had been on probation for many years. She was a recovering addict who a longtime friend spotted panhandling at a local gas station to score drugs. At one point, she had physically assaulted Lonna and Blaire during an altercation at the family home. According to Blaire, she had stolen money from her. As the family tells it, she had also survived a physically abusive relationship.
On November 3, Rosanne—her legal probation period having ended—was eligible to vote. She cast her ballot that day. And yet she would soon feel that her vote, at least in her mind, had been cast in vain. Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, would be declared the winner. And her state, Georgia, would soon take center stage in the postelection mayhem that Trump was effectively stirring up.
As her mother, Cheryl, said, her voice cracking, “She told me…what she felt. She said, ‘My president has asked me to come support him. And I’ve done so many stupid things in my life that I’m going to do something that I really believe in.’” The autopsy’s conclusion that drugs killed Rosanne seemed implausible to Lonna because she knew her sister and how important her sobriety was in her life and what it meant for the family and her nieces. More to the point, Lonna wasn’t convinced that the investigative agencies tasked with looking into Rosanne’s cause of death had done a thorough job. Yes, much that was mentioned in the report made sense.
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