Roma are Gypsies, and yes, they do indeed have a very high crime problem. Since the Balkan Wars, Europe has been flooded with Eastern European Roma, most of whom make their living by a mixture of begging, drug sales and street crime. Places like Spain have long had a Gypsy population, for some 500 years since the people now known as Gypsies fled from some place in India, probably fleeing the Muslims. But the Romanians (Eastern European Roma who are frequently known as Rumanos or Romanians in Spain and elsewhere) have brought a whole new level of crime to the native Gypsy population.
Even regular, non-violent criminal Gypsies can drive you crazy with their begging, whining and pickpocketing. I was just in a small city in central Spain, where I saw one elderly begging lady - clothed from head to toe in black, of course - get dropped off in a Jag at her begging church by her son or some other younger male family member who was behind the wheel! It wasn't even a Beemer...it was a Jag.
So they do pretty well on their welfare benefits and begging haul.
That said, I doubt that the Gypsies as a group had anything to do with the death of this girl, and probably the individual charged didn't either, since it wouldn't be typical of Gypsy crime, which is usually pretty practical and aimed at getting money. In fact, if he did it, he'd probably be dead meat to the other Gypsies.
