18-Year-Old from Upstate New York Charged in Mahwah Murder

BY JERRY DEMARCO 

MAHWAH, N.J. – An upstate New York man who agreed to commit a murder for hire drove to a Mahwah restaurant to meet what turned out to be an undercover detective, Acting Bergen County Prosecutor Gurbir S. Grewal announced Monday.

Joshua Craig Rowling, 18, who is single and unemployed, was being held on $1 million bail in the Bergen County Jail.

Grewal said Rowling – who was arrested without incident on Friday at the Mason Jar on Ramapo Valley Road – “used the dark web to offer his services as a hitman” and “agreed with another to commit a murder in exchange for a firearm fitted with a silencer and cash.

“Ultimately, Rowling drove from his home in Richmondville, New York to Mahwah, New Jersey to meet with a person he thought was seeking his services as a hitman,’ the prosecutor said, “but [he] was actually an undercover officer.

“Search warrants were subsequently executed at Rowling’s home in New York as well as of his vehicle in New Jersey, and numerous items of evidence were recovered,” Grewal said.

Members of the prosecutor’s Cyber Crimes Unit charged Rowling with conspiracy to commit murder for hire and various counts of illegal possession of weapons and a silencer.

Grewal thanked agents with the federal Homeland Security Investigations unit in Newark and Mahwah police for their assistance in the case.  

Originally published by Daily Voice