Irene Linore LaRosa – or Rene as she preferred – was born in 1953 as the 8th of 11 children to Nunzio Salvatore "Nathan" LaRosa II (1919-1970) and Irene Marie Lessard LaRosa Davis (1922-2006).

Irene went missing from Ellington, Connecticut sometime in 1971. A missing report was only filed in 2016 by her niece Tina LaRosa Richburg. The exact date of her disappearance remains unknown; however, she had already disappeared from a couple months when her brother Rudy met his future wife in July and was last pictured in a photo with one of her nephews dated April 16.

In 1985, her sister Claudette LaRosa Doubleday wrote an article on The Chronicle looking for her. This article provides an insight regarding Rene's early life: "Not long after Rene was born, the state took the children and put them in foster homes, because the parents, Nathan and Irene LaRosa, were leaving them alone for extended periods of them with the eldest child, Claudette, who was then not yet in her teens. The family got back together again in the early 1960s and moved to Rockville".

The kids got separated into different orphanages; Rene grow up at the Our Lady of Rose Hill Orphanage in New Britain, Connecticut with her siblings Nadine and Rudy.

In the years following her disappearance, two other tragedies struck the family:

– In June 1975, Irene's sister-in-law Susan Sharon Gonthier LaRosa (married to Irene's older brother Robert) disappeared from her Ward Street apartment in Vernon, Connecticut. Susan's murdered body was found in a remote wooded area of Vernon, Connecticut in 1978.

– In November 1989, Irene's stepsister Marguerite Ann Davis Lawrence was found burned in a car in the woods on Ashford. Autopsy showed asphyxia was the cause of death. The case was treated as a suspicious death.