00:00:00
[Music] up next three women are in florida on their first real vacation these women who were here by themselves
00:00:12
thought this is great we're seeing tampa bay the evidence suggests they took a boat ride
00:00:17
and then disappeared but there was little else to go on there are hundreds if not
00:00:24
thousands of miles to look over to find a piece of evidence hairs fibers any fingerprints would have been washed
00:00:31
away but a public billboard turns citizens into investigators i thought it was a excellent idea
00:00:42
brilliant [Music] on a warm june morning in tampa florida authorities discovered the bodies of
00:00:56
three women floating in tampa bay they knew that there was foul play because the women were tied up
00:01:04
and had bricks around them the victims had their mouths taped shut were naked from the waist down and had
00:01:15
been bound with yellow rope it was horrible it was terrible it was beyond comprehension to think anyone
00:01:23
could do what was done to those girls the first question facing investigators was the identity
00:01:30
of these three women there was no id so we weren't able to identify who these individuals were where they came from
00:01:37
and who they might have had contact with prior to this event although each victim was tied to a
00:01:43
30-pound concrete block decomposition created gases that lifted both the bodies and
00:01:50
concrete blocks to the surface the water temperature was hot had this occurred in much colder
00:01:58
temperatures much colder water one cinder block might have held them under the surface you'd have to do a lot of study
00:02:05
on that to figure that out the medical examiner estimated the bodies had been in the water for at
00:02:10
least three days to pinpoint where the victims were put in the water investigators asked the university of
00:02:18
south florida to analyze the currents for that time period and they felt that they were probably
00:02:25
thrown in out in the center of the bay somewhere wasn't off of a bridge was not off of any shoreline
00:02:33
after media outlets picked up the story the manager of a local hotel called police
00:02:40
he said a woman and her two daughters checked into his hotel three days earlier he said he hadn't seen them after that
00:02:49
but their belongings were still there none of the personal belongings were messed with they were
00:02:55
all the same as they had been for a couple of days there was no evidence that anyone had
00:03:00
been in the room the beds were never ruffled the towels were never wet everything was in the same place the
00:03:07
room was registered to joan rogers and her two daughters police contacted jones husband hal
00:03:16
rogers a dairy farmer in ohio the sheriff got a hold of me and we had to get dental records
00:03:25
to identify him dental records confirmed that the victims were 36 year old joan rogers
00:03:35
17 year old michelle and 14 year old christy the autopsy confirmed everyone's worst fears water was found
00:03:47
in the victims lungs which meant they were thrown into the ocean while they were still
00:03:53
alive to investigators this wasn't just murder it was an execution [Applause] the horror of that resonated through the
00:04:11
tampa bay area and people wanted to know what kind of animal would do something like that
00:04:17
i think he left their eyes uncovered because he wanted each one of them to see what was
00:04:22
happening to the other one i think he wanted to see the fear that was in their eyes as he was doing what
00:04:28
he was doing with him which is is about as perverted as you can get but who wanted to murder three tourists
00:04:37
and dump their bodies in tampa bay when joan rogers and her daughters drove to florida for a week of sightseeing
00:04:49
joan's husband hal the girl's father decided to stay behind he had a dairy farm he was running at
00:04:56
the time that's a 365 day a year job but even though his family didn't return home as planned hal rogers waited
00:05:06
three days to contact police he seemed somewhat cold to me very cold here's a person who's just lost his
00:05:14
entire family not just one but three people and there was no emotion hal told police
00:05:22
he didn't have time to be emotional he had a farm to run i just did what i needed to do to
00:05:28
function and didn't worry about nothing else investigators tracked house whereabouts
00:05:34
for the day of the murders for hal he didn't like to cook for himself so he ate his meals
00:05:41
at local restaurants and numerous witnesses provided his alibi the people here know
00:05:48
because i'd been to breakfast that morning and that evening for dinner so you know almost an
00:05:54
impossibility at the autopsies the medical examiner discovered the sea water had
00:06:02
eliminated crucial forensic evidence with the bodies being submerged in the water for the length of time that they
00:06:08
were any trace evidence hairs fibers any fingerprints would have been washed away essentially by the water it
00:06:16
was impossible to say for certain if the victims had been sexually assaulted we had nothing to go on as far as
00:06:25
forensic evidence to amount to anything police were on the lookout for joan rogers car
00:06:30
and they found it at a public boat launch it was one mile away from the rogers hotel
00:06:37
25 miles away from where their bodies were recovered inside the car were two handwritten
00:06:45
notes on one were directions to the hotel the other on hotel stationery contained
00:06:53
directions to the boat launch the writing samples were sent to a forensic document examiner
00:07:00
for analysis the handwriting that appeared on the day's end letterhead was written by joan rogers and we knew
00:07:08
that because we received quite a bit of her handwriting for comparison the handwriting
00:07:14
on the other note the one with directions to the rogers hotel was distinctive i determined
00:07:22
that the handwriting on the brochure was not written by the mother or either of her daughters
00:07:26
in the word courtney part of the hotel's address the t was capitalized in the middle of
00:07:34
the word this is unusual not only because it's a capital letter but because of the spatial quality of
00:07:41
the small r to the tall t and the letter y was written in a way that theresa stubbs
00:07:49
had never seen before the letter y was written four times and each time it was written differently
00:07:56
just a slight variation but different that was important so they're working it really hard
00:08:03
we got to find who wrote this note we do that we find the killer besides the handwriting the note held
00:08:10
one other clue next to the directions to the boat launch joan rogers had written the phrase blue
00:08:20
with wht we just surmised it was they were meeting something that was blue and white if you're going to a boat
00:08:28
ramp what might you be meeting that would be blue and white it'd be a boat but there were no boats docked at the
00:08:34
launch it's an area where anyone residents or even tourists can put their boats into the water
00:08:40
for a day of boating then police got a break a tipster told them about a local man
00:08:47
who was running an unlicensed business from this boat launch offering tourists sunset
00:08:53
cruises on the bay his name was jason wilcox and he owned a blue and white boat a background check revealed
00:09:06
wilcox had a criminal record and had served time for aggravated assault he lived just five miles from the boat
00:09:14
launch on his property where his boat was he had some concrete blocks wilcox denied any involvement in the
00:09:22
murders but without any physical evidence to tie him to the rogers women it would be difficult to get a court
00:09:29
order for his handwriting sample you can find the suspect you can even find the one you think did it
00:09:36
but now proving it is a whole other ball game [Music] two weeks before the murders of joan
00:09:44
rogers and her two daughters homicide investigators learned of a similar crime involving a 24 year old canadian tourist
00:09:54
and a man in a blue and white boat she's a tourist and he offers her a ride on the bay and she goes wow great
00:10:03
once they were out on the water where no one could see them the man said he'd kill her if she didn't
00:10:10
have sex with him he also told her there were sharks in the water in case she was thinking of trying to
00:10:17
swim to shore she says please please don't do anything to me i'm a virgin she said he got very excited about it he
00:10:25
rapes her and he told her before he raped her it's not worth getting murdered over a sexual assault and
00:10:33
he apparently had ropes on the boat just as he did with the rogers family afterwards the man got physically ill
00:10:43
was it a matter of he was so excited he was physiologically overcome or was it that he psychologically was so
00:10:51
appalled by his act that he got sick i'm not a psychologist or physiologist but certainly that's bizarre behavior
00:11:00
inexplicably the man waited until dark drew close to shore and allowed the young woman to swim to
00:11:10
safety investigators were fairly certain it was the same man who murdered the rogers family the
00:11:18
parallels were pretty eerie unfortunately the victim took a shower before she went to police
00:11:25
headquarters to report the crime so no dna was recovered but her description of the man enabled
00:11:34
police to create this composite sketch which was distributed to the local media the victim said jason wilcox was not the
00:11:45
man who assaulted her and wilcox was also eliminated as a suspect in the rogers case in the end he was
00:11:53
given a polygraph test and was cleared on all that and actually had some alibis to where he was at the time the
00:12:01
composite sketch prompted hundreds of leads all of which had to be followed up the description of a blue and white boat
00:12:10
also generated plenty of hits we had close to 800 men that were called in a lot of them had to do with blue and
00:12:17
white boats so that was a big big job to eliminate all these persons of interest that were called in
00:12:26
to us after those leads turned out to be dead ends investigators tried something else
00:12:34
they used five area billboards to display the sample of what they believed was the
00:12:41
killer's handwriting that was an unusual tactic and i believe they did it is because they had no place
00:12:47
else to go that's when joanne steffy saw the billboard on the side of the tampa highway and she
00:12:56
recognized the handwriting it looked like the handwriting of a contractor she knew
00:13:02
oba chandler when i first initially met mr chandler he came across as not telling the truth
00:13:10
and he wouldn't look you in the eye [Music] and he just seemed shifty joanne rushed home and found the
00:13:21
handwritten receipt for some work chandler had done for her as i was looking at it my knees actually
00:13:28
buckled i nearly fell from the sure shock of the proof now to me that this was the man
00:13:35
they've been looking for all this time and i knew there was no turning back at this point
00:13:40
that i had to get everything to the police oberchanzer's handwritten receipt was
00:13:46
compared to the handwritten note found in joan rogers car it was like oh my god this is it i
00:13:55
immediately saw the capital t repeatedly throughout his riding my heart started racing
00:14:00
i found all the whys and the variations that were on the brochure within minutes i knew i had found the
00:14:06
writer ober chandler was 43 years old and ran a construction business he was married and had eight children by
00:14:15
seven different women he also had a criminal record dating back to his teens that included
00:14:23
two sexual assaults but what was most telling was where chandler lived oba chandler's residence
00:14:33
was on a canal that was probably within a half mile a mile of where the boat ramp where
00:14:40
the victim's vehicle was found investigators tracked down ship-to-shore phone records
00:14:47
which are recorded for all boats making calls while on the water these records actually put oba chandler
00:14:54
out on the water not only on the day of the rape but also on the day of the homicide and this was
00:15:01
just a very very great find chandler denied any involvement in the murders but once
00:15:09
he was in custody police brought in one person who could possibly identify him the canadian tourist
00:15:19
who had been raped by a man in a blue and white boat she picked his photograph and
00:15:26
reacted visibly as soon as that photograph was shown and she indicated that she would really
00:15:32
like to see him live in a lineup to be absolutely certain look carefully this resulted in another
00:15:42
positive identification but just as investigators went to inspect chandler's boat
00:15:49
they discovered he had sold it most likely to get rid of potential evidence prosecutors knew
00:15:56
if they were going to get a murder conviction they'd need more evidence than just
00:16:06
handwriting a forensic document examiner was already convinced it was oba chandler's handwriting on the
00:16:14
brochure found in joan rogers car but investigators wondered if there was anything else
00:16:21
on the brochure that would guarantee a conviction the brochure was processed with a
00:16:27
chemical called anhydron a chemical that reacts with the amino acids found in fingerprint residue
00:16:32
prints when they come in contact with ninhydran will turn purple and can then be
00:16:38
photographed on the brochure were numerous fingerprints and one palm print one of the victims
00:16:48
was identified as being the source of some of those impressions but there were also unidentified prints
00:16:54
on that brochure the best unidentified print was a high quality right palm print when chandler's right
00:17:03
palm print was compared to the palm print on the brochure found in the victim's car there was no
00:17:11
doubt that not only linked our handwriting to the brochure but also a palm print and you don't get much
00:17:19
better than that oba chandler was charged with three counts of kidnapping and first degree murder
00:17:30
investigators believe chandler met joan rogers at a gas station where joan may have
00:17:36
asked him for directions to their hotels you're gonna have to you know if you've
00:17:41
got something i can break down one i can give you hey you can just write it on this okay
00:17:47
chandler wrote them on her map leaving behind a handwriting sample and his palm print
00:17:55
[Music] so you ladies here on vacation yeah we're that's when chandler may have offered to
00:18:04
give them a sunset cruise on his boat and offered the girls [Music] accepted yeah it sounds good why don't you take
00:18:16
down the instructions chandler gave joan directions to the boat launch and when she wrote them she also jotted
00:18:24
down a vital clue blue with w-h-t later that night chandler took them out on the water
00:18:40
where they were at his mercy [Music] the women couldn't swim so there was no way they could have made it to shore
00:18:55
safely they had no option but to comply they were bound and gagged and presumably
00:19:07
sexually assaulted later he tied each one of them to a concrete block and threw them
00:19:19
[Music] overboard chandler left an electronic trail when he called his wife on the ship to shore
00:19:46
radio to tell her his boat had engine trouble and that he'd be late for dinner chandler's other mistake was leaving his
00:19:59
handwriting and palm print behind over chandler was tried convicted and sentenced to death
00:20:09
over chandler you have not only forfeited your right to live among us under the laws of the
00:20:15
state of florida you have forfeited your right to live at all mr chandler may god have mercy
00:20:22
on your soul the bold decision to put the handwriting evidence on billboards for the entire city to see made the
00:20:32
difference in this case i thought it was an excellent idea brilliant because detectives can only work
00:20:41
on leads that they receive and when they've exhausted every possible lead they have
00:20:46
that's when it becomes necessary to try something different and let the public in the
00:20:53
investigators were up against dead end they didn't know what to do and they said what do we have to lose
00:20:59
by putting up this billboard and yeah it was a gamble but it was a gamble that certainly paid off
00:21:05
i think the singular uh break in the case came with the identification of the handwriting
00:21:09
that was his ultimate undoing you