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[Music] up next a serial killer was on the loose in new york city these people were
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chopped up it's just a savage way to die we felt that he really pissed somebody
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off the media labels him the last call killer the last call for drinks that's
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the last that was seen of them nearly a decade passes and police still have no suspects
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until advances in forensic science finally help pinpoint the killer it's the most bizarre case i've ever been
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involved with [Music] for sanitation workers collecting trash along the new jersey turnpike in 1991
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it was a day like any other until they found a plastic bag so heavy the men decided to look inside
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the worker felt like it was a pumpkin or something but it was something else it was a head a human head human skull
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[Music] when police arrived at the scene they found even more bags with more body parts
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the body was severed into seven pieces two legs two arms upper and lower torso and the
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head there were ligature marks on his wrist which suggested he was tied up or bound
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at some point one bag contained latex gloves a bed sheet shower curtain and a blood stained
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saw it tells law enforcement that this happened in some home or a rented place a hotel room it could be any of those
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things the victim's wallet was found in one of the bags there was clearly no attempt to hide the
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identity of the victim the victim was 56 year old thomas mulcahy an executive for an information
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company in massachusetts who'd been in new york city on a business trip he was married for approximately 33
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years he had four children with the youngest being i believe 18 years of age and the
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others were young adults mulcahy had been stabbed to death then dismembered the body parts as well as the bags
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themselves were washed before they were dumped [Music] well the washing tells us that the
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killer wants to remove evidence and two that there is an an intimate aspect to it of of keeping the body close it's
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erotic you're taking care of the victim thomas mulcahy's wife told police some
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personal information she felt might be pertinent she said at some point in his life he started experimenting
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with homosexual sex i don't know that she approved of it by tracing his credit card activity
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detectives learned that mulcahy's last transaction was at an atm at 11 15 pm
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two nights before his body was found tom mckay draws two hundred dollars from an atm machine
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at 49th and avenue of america's with our luck the camera system was down so we
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had no pictures there was no evidence mulcahy had ever returned to his hotel room that night
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which was only a block away but there was evidence he had stopped in a nearby bar
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well k he was seen at the townhouse bar which is an upscale gay bar in manhattan
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he was intoxicated this was consistent with the medical examiner's report the medical examiner determined that
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thomas mulcahy's blood alcohol level was above the legal limit witnesses said that mulcahy was talking
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with a white male with brown hair but no one could say for sure whether they left the bar together
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using the witness's descriptions police created a composite sketch which was distributed to the media
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we were unsuccessful everything we did up until that point was unsuccessful but there was one item found with mulcahy's
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body that provided an important clue in one of the trash bags was the wrapper for the latex gloves
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the price sticker showed they were purchased from a cvs drug store in staten island new york
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but investigators still faced a daunting task there were almost half a million people living in staten island we had
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nothing you know we were grasping at straws one year after finding thomas mulcahy's
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dismembered body new jersey police had another case that was eerily similar this time in
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manchester township new jersey the body parts were bagged in a similar fashion they're double bagged
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double knotted the most striking thing at least to me was the way the bodies were dismembered into
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the same seven parts prints were taken and put into this system and it turned out that this
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particular individual had a minor criminal record he was identified as anthony marrero
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marrero's record showed he was a gay prostitute like the mulcahy case marrero's body parts and the bags had
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both been washed before they were dumped along the side of the road we had really no prints no dna anything
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could tie us to a viable suspect also like mulcahy the victim had ligature marks on his
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wrists and ankles there's something called a signature killer that is a killer who tends to repeat their process
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with several victims the cuts that were performed on his body were described as as being disarticulated
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in that you actually don't just cut right through the bone you actually pull
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the joints apart and cut through cartilage as opposed to bone this disarticulation
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was a vital clue we know it was post-mortem the precision of the cuts led us to believe
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that this was done by somebody who had some knowledge somebody in the medical profession
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possibly somebody along those lines one of the bags found with marrero's body had the words
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president's choice on it this shopping bag was sold at only nine locations and one of the locations
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happened to be staten island the store in staten island which sold those bags was close to the cvs
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drugstore that sold the latex gloves found with thomas mulcahy's body the reasonable assumption is that the
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killer either lives or works in that neighborhood because that would be within what's called their zone of
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familiarity their comfort zone using a process called super glue fuming investigators were able to lift two
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partial fingerprints and a partial palm print from the bags these prints were entered into the
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nationwide fingerprint database of known criminal offenders the results of that entry and the search
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were negative there was no no match we had ran out of leads and uh it wasn't looking too promising
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two months later investigators worst fears were realized when another dismembered body was found in a
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garbage can 12 miles outside of new york city i looked down in a garbage can there was
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a couple arms you know folded up neatly the reaction of every person who found body parts and i quote them was holy
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there was no doubt this was the work of the same killer the body was placed in similar type
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garbage bags double knotted double bagged there were seven pieces also and again
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the body and the bags had been washed down there was no physical evidence recovered
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no fingerprints no dna that was foreign to him the victim was identified as 56 year old mike sakara
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he was a fixture in the five oaks bar in greenwich village the five oaks was a piano bar
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and it did cater to the gay clientele lisa hall was a bartender at the five oaks on the night mike sakara was
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murdered lisa said a white male came into the bar and sat next to mike hey how you doing
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she had never seen the man before yes i assumed he knew michael because why would he when there's empty seats go sit
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right next to him and i made the man of scotch in water and michael said lisa this is so and so
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he's a nurse at st vincent [Music] when she left the bar michael and this man were still there
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michael was not the type to go home with anyone and it seemed like he knew him you know i didn't think anything of it
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no one saw the two men leave the bar together the detectives asked me for a name i
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said it was like john or mark a very common name but it was just a first name and i
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didn't really remember a name i remembered a face so investigators created a composite
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sketch based on lisa's description but even lisa knew finding him wouldn't be easy well new
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york city it would seem almost impossible to try to find a suspect unless they could find
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some connection somehow [Music] detectives across new york and new jersey were desperately trying to find a
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serial killer who was targeting gay men the media dubbed him the last call killer
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the most recent victim mike sakara was last seen in a bar with a white male whom he introduced to the bartender as a
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nurse working at saint vincent's hospital in new york when police followed up with the local
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hospitals they identified a male nurse at saint vincent's 38-year-old mark slayton
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who not only resembled the composite drawing he also lived in staten island near the stores where the killer
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purchased the latex gloves and garbage bags used in the murders unfortunately slayton's prints didn't match the prints
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found on the plastic bags it's heartbreaking you're out there pounding the payments you know doing
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everything you can and you don't have an answer for them so it was very frustrating
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thinking that the killer may have misled his victims about where he worked detective kuhn enlisted his own children
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in the investigation to distribute the composite sketch of the killer to all the local hospitals
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it was a family project i had my kids sitting at the table what we wanted to do was send a mass flyer out to all the
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hospitals on staten island unfortunately the flyers didn't generate any significant leads there were no
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motives nobody had anybody mad at them nobody was going to profit by anybody's
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death there were no jealous lovers and soon the case turned cold many many man hours hundreds if not
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thousands of man hours devoted to these investigations and essentially the trails just went
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cold the murder stopped too leaving police to suspect the killer may have changed his mo
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so our thoughts were either he's locked up he's dead or any or he's still out
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there and he's getting a lot better at it then eight years later the case went in a new
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direction it happened when investigators heard about a new fingerprint technique that
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was being used in toronto called vacuum metal deposition or vmd the vacuum metal deposition machine
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is the ultimate machine to find fingerprints on non-porous materials you can have material that was stored for 50
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years investigators immediately sent a dozen bags from the last call killer case to
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toronto they'd been in storage for years in the canadian lab the bags were exposed to 10 milligrams
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about 20 cents worth of gold which was heated to 2000 degrees fahrenheit enough to turn it into a gas
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this gold vapor creates a film over the surface being tested but it is invisible
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to the naked eye then vaporized zinc is introduced into the chamber it adheres to gold
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which locks any prints in place so they can be photographed the end product is a negative of the
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fingerprint on the surface the non-porous material and that's what we end up seeing
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the vmd process yielded 16 partial prints on the bags from the mulcahy murder and three from the
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marrero case these prints were of much better quality than the original ones i was ecstatic we have latents walls on
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our court the new prints were entered into the national fingerprint database of known
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criminal offenders again there were no matches but detective kuhn also sent hard copies
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of the prince to each state since not all states had put their prints into the nationwide database
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this was our last shot and we felt that if we could reach out that maybe they'd put that little extra
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effort into the submission [Music] when the fingerprints of the last call killer made it through the mail to
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layton print examiner kim stevens in maine state police crime lab she was happy to help out
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the state of maine hadn't yet put all of their prints onto the national fingerprint database i received the
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prints in the mail with a cover letter and i read the letter and the synopsis of the case
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kim stevens entered the last call killer's prince into maine's state database
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i thought there's no way i would get a match i had done a lot of searches for outside
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agencies and the chances i thought would be very slim but the database of known criminal
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offenders in maine turned up 30 possible matches so 30 prints came up in the list for me
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to look at one by one side by side to see if they could be the print for the side by side comparison
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stevens used the original hard copies made by the 30 criminals when they were arrested and inked by police
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it's time consuming and exhausting you want to do when your eye is fresh and you're ready to make comparisons
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then stevens found one that she thought matched every time i went to the next ridge and
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found detail that agreed obviously it was surprised i was jumping up being down for joy and
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couldn't believe it the final step is to have the match verified by another examiner
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and that person agreed the prince belonged to richard rogers a former graduate student in languages at
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the university of maine in 1973 rogers was charged with using a hammer to kill his college roommate
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he wrapped the body in a plastic tent and left it on the side of the road richard rogers apparently said
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that the other man had approached him for sex and the other man attacked him so in self-defense he attacked back and
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ended up killing him mr rogers claimed self-defense and was acquitted amazing after he was acquitted
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rogers got a nursing degree and eventually moved to new york at the time of the last call murders
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rogers had been working as a surgical assistant at mount sinai hospital in new york
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that's where police arrested him they put handcuffs on while he was in our intensive care unit that does uh shock
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us to say the least he was gay didn't really seem to have any long-term relationships
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in your wildest dreams you would not look at richard rogers and say this guy is a serial killer we learned that
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during the times of these murders richard rodgers had been off duty lisa hall chose roger's picture from a
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photo lineup as the man she saw with mike sakara at the bar on the night sakara was murdered
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it was just a horrible horrible thing and i'm just so glad they got him before he could murder any other people
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rogers lived in staten island just blocks from the stores where the garbage bags and latex gloves were
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purchased detectives searched richard rogers apartment and they found an array of
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videotapes hush sweet charlotte texas chainsaw massacre he had a bible in which there were
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earmarked passages referring to beheadings and dismemberments also in roger's apartment they found a
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vial of a prescription drug used as a sedative it's one that's not screened for in a
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routine autopsy you can use it as a date rape drug you can use it to knock people out
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prosecutors believe rogers would pick up his victims in gay bars [Music] he targeted men who were drinking
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heavily thanks very much thank you enjoy i shall do it rogers may have used a date rape drug
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and taken his victims back to his apartment or they may have gone willingly nice collection too
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once there the evidence shows he stabbed them then dismembered the bodies he most likely moved the bodies to new
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jersey at night to avoid detection but even the most careful criminals make mistakes
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and rogers left evidence behind the elaborate washing of the victims and the bags
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didn't remove everything as for motive rogers wouldn't talk all experts can say is that the murders
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had a clear sexual motivation it's the most bizarre case i've ever been involved with
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and for for all of these men there was just no dignity and death in november of 2000
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rogers was tried and convicted of two of the murders the cases where they had the most
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forensic evidence he was sentenced to two life terms plus 65 years in prison when you look back on
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it is you never gave up you keep plugging along it never ceases to amaze me what we get
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in terms of forensics whether it's fingerprints uh dna any number of things it's the most powerful tool you can have
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in a courtroom as a prosecutor it was pretty horrible to sit there and look at this man that actually murdered
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michael sakara and to think about all the other people that lost their lives and all their families and and friends
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that lost people because of this monster was sitting there but at least he was finally
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put away [Music]