California dad sentenced for murdering 11-year-old son. Boy was ‘malnourished and tortured’

A murder case that began four years ago with the discovery of the lifeless body of an 11-year-old boy in a Northern California basement ended Thursday morning with an online video-conferencing call, as an El Dorado Superior Court judge sentenced the child’s father to 15 years to life in prison for his son’s death.

Judge Vicki Ashworth formally sentenced 38-year-old Jordan Thomas Piper for the 2020 death of his only son, Roman Lopez, whose body was found in a storage bin in the basement of his father’s Placerville home.

In October, Piper unexpectedly changed his plea days before a scheduled hearing to determine whether he would stand trial. Piper pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Roman’s death.

The judge told Piper it was his responsibility as a father to raise Roman, to make this “small child” into the finest young man that he could’ve been.

“You absolutely utterly and completely not only failed in that respect, but it was at your hands that he was abused to the point where he had bruises on his wrist from being zip-tied to his bed,” Ashworth said. “He was zip-tied at times in the closet, was given an over amount of sodium or salt in his diet, forced to wear diapers at the age of 11 years old.”

Piper has been in custody without bail since Feb. 4, 2021, when he and his wife Lindsay Marie Piper, Roman’s stepmother, were arrested. The El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office accused the couple of child abuse that led to the boy’s death.

“It wasn’t as if he was a human being to yourself and Ms. Piper but rather an object and nothing more. An inconvenience, if you will,” Ashworth told the father. “It was through those callous actions that, unfortunately, Roman died and does not have the ability to live a full, complete and meaningful life.”

On Thursday, Piper was not in the El Dorado County courtroom for his sentencing. He is incarcerated in a federal prison in Milan, Michigan, serving a sentence for sexually exploiting a girl — crimes discovered as authorities investigated his son’s death.

Piper participated in Thursday’s sentencing via online video conferencing. He sat at a table wearing a tan-colored prison inmate uniform. He only briefly spoke during the nearly 90-minute hearing to inform the judge that he understood the terms of his sentencing.

Boy reported missing in Placerville

Roman was reported missing from his home Jan. 11, 2020. Officials later revealed that investigators found “Roman deceased inside a storage bin in the basement” of the Pipers’ rented Placerville home hours after the boy was reported missing.

Piper and his wife were arrested and charged with second-degree murder. They also were charged with child abuse likely to cause great bodily injury or death and causing cruel and extreme pain for revenge, extortion or sadistic purpose, according to a filed criminal complaint.

The boy’s father was charged with an additional count of willfully failing to provide food, clothing, shelter and medical attention to the boy. His wife was charged with a separate count of willfully having “mingled a poison and harmful substance with food, drink, medicine, and pharmaceutical product and placed a poison and harmful substance in a spring, well, reservoir and public water supply” knowing it could cause injury.

In May 2022, Lindsay Piper changed her plea to no contest to the murder charge, the District Attorney’s Office has said. She was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison. As of Thursday, the 41-year-old mother was serving her state prison sentence at the Central California Women’s Facility in Madera County.

Other than the murder charges, the additional charges the Pipers faced were dropped in accordance with the plea agreements they made with prosecutors.

‘Jordan Piper deserves nothing’

Before Jordan Piper was formally sentenced, members of the boy’s extended family and others close to him spoke about the child and the impact his death has had on them. Those who spoke during the hearing also participated via the video conference; they were not in the courtroom.

Roman’s mother, Rochelle Lopez, died at the age of 34 in 2021. Erin Rice, Lopez’s best friend, spoke in court about the anguish the mother suffered while unsuccessfully trying fighting in court for custody of her son. Rice said Piper began inflicting his abuse on the boy years before his body was found.

“Jordan Piper deserves nothing; no freedom, no sunlight,” Rice said.

Rice and Lopez served together in the U.S. Army in tours of duty in Iraq. Rice said Piper kept the boy away from his mother as she repeatedly made legal attempts to ensure her son was being cared for, but the father would move with the boy to other states to avoid any court intervention.

She said the mother learned of her son’s death days after his body was discovered, but that Piper never informed the child’s mother her son was dead or even that he was missing. The mother would only later learn that her son had been “mistreated, malnourished and tortured,” Rice said.

The boy’s family on Thursday said the child weighed 42 pounds at the time of his death, which is what he weighed when he was 9 years old. They also said boy’s mother collapsed after seeing her son in a coffin at a funeral home, realizing how small his body looked for his age.

Piper also served in the military, Rice said, but she refuses to refer to him as a soldier. She said Piper doesn’t exemplify the “loyalty duty, helpless service, honor, integrity and personal courage” that is the foundation who they are as soldiers.

“He’s a monster. He’s manipulative, and he is selfish,” Rice said. “He’s a shell of a man with no moral compass or value. He knew what he was doing was wrong and did it anyway for years and did nothing to stop it.”

Jackie Farah, Jordan Piper’s mother and the child’s grandmother, said listening to people speak Thursday, “you would think I raised a monster.”

But she directed blame at her son’s wife, saying she should’ve questioned her son and his wife more about her grandson’s care.

“I come here as Roman’s grandmother first,” Farah said during Thursday’s hearing. “I cannot begin to tell you the grief I have over the death of my grandson.”

Farah said all she ever wanted was for Roman to feel loved and secure, but her son’s work as an electrical lineman took him away from home and left his wife as the gatekeeper for information on how her grandson was doing. She said she should’ve communicated directly with her son.

“I failed at that responsibility and I will take that to my grave that I wasn’t able to see what Lindsay was doing,” Farah said. “I do not believe that Jordan killed my grandson, but he failed to protect him.”

She said she knows her son loves Roman, misses him and talks about the boy constantly, but her son “has to be held accountable for this.”

Child in custody dispute used as a ‘pawn,’ family says

Relatives of the boy’s mother and his father’s second wife said Piper used Roman as a “pawn” in the custody battle, because Rochelle Lopez didn’t love Piper anymore. They said he vindictively kept the boy hidden from everyone, especially his mother, to get back at her.

Jennifer Morasco, who was married to Piper for three years and was Roman’s stepmother, said having to leave behind Roman when she ended her marriage in 2013 broke her heart. She said Piper pursued women after Rochelle Lopez rejected him to fulfill his son’s need for a mother caregiver, but, more importantly, to make the boy’s mother jealous.

“He only wanted custody (of Roman) so he wouldn’t have to pay child support,” Morasco said Thursday. “Jordan forced Roman to call any and every woman he was ever with “mommy. And all Rochelle ever wanted was to be with Roman, and Jordan dedicated his life to making sure that didn’t happen.”

Richard Lopez, the boy’s grandfather and his mother’s father, said he and his wife repeatedly offered to care for Roman if Piper didn’t truly want him. But all Piper wanted was to make his daughter’s life miserable, Lopez said.

The grandfather said Piper chose to homeschool his son and moved Roman from state to state to avoid questions about child abuse from school officials and neighbors.

“The extent he went to keep Roman out of sight. But we all know now it was to hide the truth, the neglect,” Lopez said about Piper. “You let your only son go without love, food, shelter, kindness, family, friends and school.

Investigators find videos of girl

In a separate, federal case in October, Jordan Piper was sentenced to 15 years in prison for sexually exploiting a girl at his homes in Tuolumne and El Dorado counties from late 2019 through early 2020.

As the Placerville Police Department investigated his son’s death in 2020, law enforcement seized a digital camera and other digital devices. Investigators searched cellphones and found evidence that Piper secretly recorded videos of the underage girl.

The FBI said investigators found many videos that depicted the girl using the bathroom and bathing. The girl was living in Piper’s Groveland home at the time. Piper sent the girl sexually explicit text messages from Dec. 16 to Dec. 24 of 2019, “concerning a sexual ‘Christmas gift,’” and offering her $250 to use it, according to a filed FBI affidavit. Investigators found more than 430 explicit images of the girl.

In March, Piper pleaded guilty to the child sexual exploitation charge. As part of the federal sentence, the judge ordered Piper to serve 7 ½ years of parole and register as a convicted sex offender.

Tasha Paris Chalfant, Piper’s attorney, represented him in the federal exploitation case and the El Dorado County murder case. In court documents filed in the federal case, she wrote that Piper was the sole source of income for his family, which included his wife, son, four stepchildren and three foster children.

The defense attorney also said her client “felt tremendous financial and personal stress” and used nonprescribed pills and drank alcohol after work each night.

“He completely lost himself as well as his moral compass, and he has tremendous remorse and shame for his conduct in this case,” Chalfant wrote in the sentencing recommendation in the federal case.

California prison sentence

On Thursday, Judge Ashworth made it clear that Piper will be placed on a custody hold and returned to California once he is done serving his federal prison sentence. The state Parole Board will then decide whether he is eligible for parole, since his sentence for the murder charge carries a potential life sentence.

If Piper is granted release from custody in California, Ashworth said he would have to remain on parole for the rest of his life and be subject to further incarceration for any parole violations.

“There is no measure of justice which is gonna completely balance the scales,” said Deputy District Attorney Jay Linden. “It is with this plea in this resolution, we hope to bring some of the closure to the victims.”

Several members of the boy’s family asked the judge to order Piper to serve a consecutive state prison sentence, meaning his punishment for the child’s death would only begin after his federal sentence was completed. But Ashworth told the family she was bound to the plea deal and its agreed-upon sentence.

“My hope is that you think of Roman every single day that you are in custody,” Ashworth told Piper moments before ending his sentencing hearing.

“And I hope that his memory, quite frankly, haunts you for the rest of your days.”