00:00:06
Hey weirdos. I'm Elena. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid. [Music] It's morbid part two.
00:00:29
And boy is it morbid. Yeah, this is a very morbid case. Uh it's like deeply upsetting.
00:00:36
Yeah. But I think a case that everybody should hear because Wow. because Oh boy.
00:00:42
Yeah. Lots lots to dive into here. Lots happening. I guess since it's part two, do you want
00:00:47
to just get right into it? Yeah, I think we should. I think we bantered a lot in part one.
00:00:51
So yeah. All right. So, in part one, speaking of, we went over very, very brutal
00:00:57
discoveries of four men who had been dismembered and dumped in garbage bags at various locations between
00:01:02
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. The victims, Peter Anderson, Thomas Mkei, Anthony Morero, and Michael Sakura
00:01:09
were all gay men who had last been seen in or near uh piano bars in New York City. And while investigators knew it
00:01:16
was pretty likely that all of these men had been killed by the same person, they
00:01:20
didn't have much as far as evidence or leads went. And a lot of these cases were going cold after just like a couple
00:01:26
months Yeah. of investigating. But investigators now with another fourth body that was very clearly linked
00:01:33
to the other three needed to get to work. They're like, "All right, we got to start connecting these."
00:01:37
Yeah. Like we really got to got to get to it. Got to get on it. So, while they did
00:01:41
that, reporters across the tri-state area started putting the pieces together of their own investigation. To anybody
00:01:46
who was working a crime beat in the New York area, the details of the Michael Sakura murder sounded very familiar, and
00:01:53
it occurred to more than a few journalists that there was probably a serial killer in the region targeting
00:01:57
gay men. Within a few days, investigators responded to questions about that possibility, but it was clear
00:02:03
that they were keeping things close to the chest at this point. All they would say was that they were looking for quote
00:02:08
unquote possible links between the cases to which I would have said, "I think there's about 45 babes. I think we found
00:02:14
some." Yeah. But in the absence of information from investigators, local LGBTQ plus
00:02:19
activist groups stepped up to offer assistance and to educate the public about the serious problem of violence
00:02:25
that was, you know, queer people were facing every single day. Yeah. Matt Foreman told a reporter for
00:02:30
News Day, "It's a shame that we have to wait until there's a bonafide string of these infidants before we can get any
00:02:35
attention." Yeah. As the executive director for the Gay and Lesbian Antiviolence Project, Matt
00:02:40
Foreman was pretty well acquainted with the problem of of anti-gay violence across the country. And he himself even
00:02:47
offered to help the police with questioning members of the gay community who were typically a bit hesitant to
00:02:52
speak with law enforcement because of their past. Yeah. But within a week uh within a week
00:02:57
of the discovery of Michael Sakura's body, investigators were more forthcoming with information, but they
00:03:03
still remained cautious. Rockland County District Attorney Kenneth Grizz said, "We're not trying to cause panic, but we
00:03:10
don't want to be living in a dream world." He did though confirm the similarities between the cases. He said
00:03:15
they were undeniable and enough for the public to be concerned about. Okay. For him, one of the most
00:03:21
compelling details was that all the bodies were left in locations where they were almost sure to have been found
00:03:26
quickly, even though they were concealed. That's what's interesting. He said, "If you dump something in a
00:03:31
wooded area, there's a good chance it won't be discovered. But when you throw something in a trash can, there's a
00:03:36
great possibility it will be." Yeah. They all agreed, investigators, that it felt like the killer was challenging
00:03:41
them to find him. Within days, the press dubbed the killer the quote last call killer, which was a reference to the
00:03:48
fact that almost all of the victims had last been seen in gay bars around closing time.
00:03:54
The name gave the press and local activist groups something to latch on to and refer to as the threat of this
00:04:00
killer continued to completely terrify the gay community. Yeah, understandably. Yeah. In response, groups like the Gay
00:04:06
and Lesbian Antiviolence Project spread out across the city, handing out flyers with tips on how to stay safe without,
00:04:13
you know, sacrificing a social life. Yeah. Uh, a lot of groups also banded together
00:04:17
and offered a $30,000 reward for information leading to an arrest, but unfortunately, none of those leads ended
00:04:24
up being productive. Damn. But I do love seeing the community come together and really try to make a
00:04:30
difference. While community activists hit the street on to protect their own, law enforcement officials from New York,
00:04:36
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania got together and formed their own task force to address this interstate killer. Using
00:04:43
a description of the man seen with Michael Sakura at the Five Oaks, a sketch of the suspect was finally made
00:04:49
now and circulated to all law enforcement officers in all three states. In New York, detective visited
00:04:56
St. Vincent's Hospital working the most viable lead that they had because remember someone had seen Michael at the
00:05:01
bar and he had introduced him to whoever he was sitting with and said he's a nurse at St. Vincent's.
00:05:07
Yep. Unfortunately, after the sketch was passed around to every staff member at the hospital and even after key staff
00:05:14
members were interviewed, none of them remembered seeing anybody who even slightly resembled the sketch.
00:05:20
Damn. It seemed that if the killer was a nurse, he definitely didn't work at St.
00:05:24
Vincent's. Okay. So, for months, the 18 officer task force just poured over the details and
00:05:30
the evidence in the case, hoping that there might be some detail they missed that they would find and that would
00:05:35
break the case. Yeah. By that time, the consensus was that they were looking for one man in all
00:05:40
four homicides. But at the same time, this killer didn't seem to have a lot in common with the serial killers they were
00:05:46
familiar with, like Ted Bundy or the Hillside Stranglers. Those killers went out of their way to display their
00:05:52
victims. Yeah. New York police detective Ray Pierce said, "There are some killers who
00:05:56
kill once and could be sufficient for the rest of their lives. There are others who have a fantasy and who attack
00:06:02
again and again to refuel that fantasy." As far as Pierce and the other task force members could tell, the man they
00:06:07
were hunting definitely fell into that ladder category. But as it would turn out, things were not so black and white.
00:06:14
After a few months of pursuing leads, sending over undercover officers into bars late at night and interviewing
00:06:20
hundreds and hundreds of potential witnesses, the last call killer task force eventually hit a dead end.
00:06:26
Leads and tips from the public started to dry up, and by the end of 1993, the task force disbanded. And strangely,
00:06:33
after the murder of Michael Sakura, the murders simply and inexplicably stopped,
00:06:37
it seemed. Now cold, Michael Sakura's case was shelved along with Anderson, Mulah, and the Morero cases as
00:06:45
investigators just moved on to more immediate cases. Detective Jack Repa said it was always with the cautisil
00:06:52
that should something come up, we'll be here tomorrow. But it would be nearly a decade before anyone on the NYPD thought
00:06:59
about the last call killer again. But by then, forensic investigation had changed
00:07:04
substantially. Although the investigations into all cases had been switched to inactive,
00:07:09
they all remained open and were all assigned to detectives in their respective cities and counties who were
00:07:14
keeping them in the back of their minds as these years passed, hoping to get a break.
00:07:18
And that break finally came in the spring of 1999 when investigators in New Jersey learned about an advance in
00:07:25
forensic science that would allow for the collection of once undetectable fingerprints through a process known as
00:07:31
vacuum metal deposition, VMD. In VMD, the technician dusts the surface with metallic P powder and then follows that
00:07:40
by a layer of zinc dust and then places the item in a vacuum chamber. The vacuum
00:07:45
process causes the two metals to adhere to any fingerprints left on the surface,
00:07:50
no matter how faint they are. Oh, that's cool. And that leaves a clear, distinct print
00:07:55
that can then be used as evidence. That is so [ __ ] cool. Isn't that really cool?
00:08:00
That's really cool. So, detectives investigating the murder of Anthony Morero knew that they had a large amount
00:08:05
of physical evidence, but when it was tested so many years earlier, those tests hadn't come up with any viable
00:08:11
prints, but that didn't mean they weren't there. Yeah. By 1999, they hoped that maybe by using
00:08:16
BMD, they could get a clear set of prints and then circulate those to other states for analysis.
00:08:21
Yeah. And with over 5 years having gone by, they hoped their suspect might have possibly been picked up on some other
00:08:28
criminal charge, which would have required his fingerprints to be entered into some kind of state or federal
00:08:33
database. Yeah. In a statement to the press, Detective Matthew [ __ ] told to reporters, "Sure, it's a cold case, but
00:08:38
we have a lot of new angles to play. We could get lucky, and we owe it to the victim's families to try."
00:08:43
Hell yeah. Which again, good detective work here, and I love the fact that they still
00:08:48
stayed on top of this after so many years. Yeah, truly. Now, the problem detectives ran into was
00:08:54
that at that point in New Jersey, none of their state or local technicians were experienced in the VMD process. Yeah.
00:09:01
But they were still determined. It took a few more months, but in late 1999, investigators in Jersey found a team of
00:09:07
crime scene technicians in Toronto, Canada, who had been using the VMD process for years. And the trash bags
00:09:14
from the Morero murder were handd delivered to those technicians to ensure a proper chain of custody. good.
00:09:20
Which like we've all seen that break down before. It's so nice to see it go the right way.
00:09:24
Yeah. That they're actually taking the precautions to make sure that they don't [ __ ] up in some irreversible way.
00:09:30
And it seems like even extra precautions, you know. So, when the bags were returned to New
00:09:34
Jersey, the technicians in Toronto had managed to lift more than two dozen previously unseen fingerprints off the
00:09:40
bags as well as several clear palm prints. So, the new prints were circulated to the surrounding states,
00:09:46
but to investigators disappointment, they failed to match anything in local databases. Come on. In the months that
00:09:53
followed, Detective Cohen continued submitting the prints to law enforcement agencies around the country. And
00:09:58
finally, in 2001, he got a hit from the AFIS database in Maine. The prints matched those collected from a suspect
00:10:07
in a 1973 murder of a University of Maine student. Whoa. Oh, so whoever this was had been a
00:10:14
suspect in in a murder previously. Holy [ __ ] According to the evidence, the man
00:10:18
that Detective [ __ ] and countless others had been hunting for a decade was Richard Rogers, a nurse who worked at
00:10:25
Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital and lived on Staten Island. Oh [ __ ] Just like they thought. They just had
00:10:33
the wrong hospital. At first glance, nothing about Richard Rogers suggested that he could have been a serial killer.
00:10:40
He was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts in June of 1950. [ __ ] And he was the first of five children
00:10:45
born into a working-class family. According to a cousin, he was quote normal normal as could be.
00:10:52
That's horrifying. Yeah, actually. When he was still very young, his family moved to Florida, where his
00:10:57
father found better paying work than his previous job as a lobster fisherman. In
00:11:01
general, Roger's life was pretty much the same as a lot of American boys in the 1950s. His dad took him fishing,
00:11:07
taught him how to hunt, and you know, just wanted him to develop a healthy appreciation for the outdoors. They had
00:11:13
a nice relationship. Things at home were cool, but things at school were not quite as ideal.
00:11:19
As a straight A student who was very neat, very tidy, and gangly and awkward, he was usually the target of bullies,
00:11:27
and they would pick on him for things like his high-pitched voice and his perceived girly nature.
00:11:32
Stop picking on people. Yeah, cut it out. Like, stop. Just There's probably something annoying
00:11:37
about you, too, so just That's the thing. Like, I love People pick on people and I'm like, "Yeah,
00:11:41
you're not [ __ ] perfect either. No one is." No. Like, look in the goddamn mirror.
00:11:47
Seriously. And it's always the people who are the most It sounds so cliche, but they're
00:11:50
always the most miserable and the most insecure. Anybody being mean to you anywhere in
00:11:55
your life, they're so [ __ ] unhappy. And take that and feel good about it. Yeah. They want to bring down to their
00:12:01
level. So, don't let them take you there. No. Don't let them take your piece. No,
00:12:05
you're great. So, Rogers didn't have a lot of friends, and according to Elon Green, he was quote teased mercilessly
00:12:11
about everything from his voice to the way that he walked. Instead of the more typical after school activities for boys
00:12:17
at the time, like boy scouts and things like that, Richard's mother also took him to Girl Scout meetings with his
00:12:23
sisters, even though his father was like, "Hey, can we not do that?" At a certain point, his father just gave up
00:12:28
and, you know, wasn't really teaching him quote unquote masculine activities anymore. and he switched his attention
00:12:34
to his oldest daughter who seemed to have an interest in hunting and really just left Richard on his own.
00:12:41
I know. It's just like, come on. Richard's life didn't improve much as he entered his teen years. In fact, it
00:12:47
probably got worse. His supposedly feminine behaviors only became more pronounced. And although he was not
00:12:53
openly gay at the time, he was tormented by his peers as though he was. By his mid- teens, the torment and the ridicule
00:13:00
from his classmates become became way too much to bear. And one afternoon, he stabbed his neighbor with a kitchen
00:13:07
knife. "Wow" escalated quickly. "Uh, holy shit." It's unclear what led to the stabbing of the young woman, and details
00:13:18
are pretty much non-existent, but the incident did get him placed in a psychiatric hospital for a period of
00:13:23
time. Wow. As they should. Uh-huh. Despite that though, he still managed to graduate from a high school
00:13:29
on time. And in 1968, he enrolled at Florida Southern, which was a small Methodist college just outside of Tampa.
00:13:36
His time at Florida Southern was pretty unremarkable. He graduated in 1972 with a BA in French. His peers and roommates,
00:13:43
at least those who remembered him, said he was a quiet but polite young man. He really didn't make much of an
00:13:48
impression. His sophomore year roommate, Don uh Donald Cberly, said that he was quote, "Extremely introverted, very
00:13:55
intelligent, but he would not talk unless you talked to him first." Okay. Understandably, he continued to hide his
00:14:01
sexuality while at Florida Southern because it definitely would have made him the target of the type of bullying
00:14:07
that he went through in his younger years. Yeah. Or possibly worse. Yeah, I would say so. Because don't
00:14:13
forget in the 1960s homosexuality was considered a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association.
00:14:20
Yeah. And homosexual activity was criminalized at this time. Cool. Yeah. So you couldn't be out.
00:14:27
Wow. Mhm. When he was younger, all he really would have to worry about was being ruthlessly bullied for being gay.
00:14:33
But as an adult, he could have been placed in jail or placed in harm's way. Actually, during his time as an
00:14:40
undergraduate, there was one student on the campus who was openly gay. And according to Elon Green, that student
00:14:46
was quote reportedly moved into an off-campus apartment by the administration for his own safety.
00:14:52
Holy [ __ ] Yeah. Where I would say, are we okay? But the answer is a resounding no.
00:14:59
No, because it's crazy that resounding no. History is like somewhat repeating itself. Yeah, it's again I say
00:15:05
I should even say somewhating history is repeating itself. On the afternoon of April 30th though
00:15:10
1973, two bicyclists riding along a back road discovered the body of a young man
00:15:16
laying at the edge of the woods about 10 ft from the road. This boy was short shirtless covered in blood and wrapped
00:15:22
in a large sheet of green canvas like you might use for a tent. Green. I was just I you couldn't see me but I
00:15:29
gave Ash a look that was like yeah green canvas. Not not green trash bags, but green canvas.
00:15:34
Green canvas. Still a strange coincidence. Police found tire marks on the road near
00:15:39
the body. And in the boy's pocket, they found a key to a post office box. So, they took that to the post office, and
00:15:45
the key was identified as belonging to 22-year-old graduate student Frederick Spencer.
00:15:51
According to the uh to the medical examiner, Spencer had been killed by at least eight blows to the back of his
00:15:56
head with a hammer. Holy [ __ ] any of which the medical examiner said would have been fatal.
00:16:02
Yeah. The murder came as a shock to the small community of Orono Main where students and faculty of the university
00:16:09
accounted for a significant portion of the only 9,000 or so residents. As far as anybody there knew, Fred Spencer was
00:16:16
wellliked. He was a hardworking young man. He got along with pretty much everybody. Um he was a student at the
00:16:22
college of life sciences and agriculture and he'd been actually recruited to the
00:16:26
school according to one adviser based on his outstanding academic record and future promise as a research scientist.
00:16:33
Wow. So this kid had a bright future ahead of him. While the body was being moved to the
00:16:38
nearest mortuary for autopsy, investigators went to the house that Fred shared with a couple of roommates
00:16:42
and other grad students. And after being invited inside by one of Spencer's roommates and taking a quick look
00:16:48
around, it was pretty obvious that they had found the scene of the murder. There
00:16:53
were dark brown and red stains on the carpet on the stairs, and it looked like somebody had tried to clean them. With
00:16:58
the roommate's permission, they continued to look around the house. Upstairs in the hallway, they found a
00:17:03
spongy material on the floor, which they had also discovered wrapped in the canvas with Spencer's body. The material
00:17:10
was scattered lightly on the floor in a trail that led to the bedroom. of Richard Rogers.
00:17:16
Oh, yep. In Rogers bedroom, they also discovered blood droplets on the walls, floor, and ceiling. They also uh found
00:17:24
bloody fingerprints on the wall beside the door and in the bathroom on the floor. And it was in Roger's bedroom
00:17:30
that the they found their murder weapon, a standard claw hammer. And you're telling me he's he was just a
00:17:37
suspect in this? You'll see. Okay. The evidence um all pointed to Rogers and he was picked up by police
00:17:43
later that day. Now, there's some conflict surrounding the nature of Richard and Fred's relationship. Most of
00:17:49
Roger's classmates recalled that they were roommates and had a strained relationship. There was like always a
00:17:54
kind of tension between them. But then other people said that they were very close and spent a lot of time together.
00:18:00
So, I don't know if maybe both of those things are true and they had some kind of falling out.
00:18:04
Yeah. and maybe they were close, spent a lot of time together, but there was always like an underlying tension. Yeah.
00:18:10
You know, but either way, investigators couldn't seem to identify any kind of motive for
00:18:15
this killing. As far as they knew, neither Richard or Fred had a history of violence, and there was nothing in
00:18:20
either of their past that would suggest something like this was possible. I don't think they knew about the
00:18:25
psychiatric stint. I was like I was like, I'm sorry. Are we are we pretending that he didn't stab
00:18:31
someone or I think they had not come across that, it seems. Okay. They they should they should look
00:18:35
into that. They for sure should before saying that they don't see a history of violence because
00:18:40
cuz that's a violent history because there's one. I see it. Oh, found it. I got it.
00:18:44
There it is. Found it. It's like where's Waldo? But history of violence. I'm so glad you saw my face being like I
00:18:50
was like, "Wait, wait, wait, wait." I was like, "Excuse me." Yeah. So, at the state police barracks,
00:18:54
Richard was brought into an interview room and it didn't take long for him to fully confess to this murder.
00:19:00
Okay. He claimed that the two had been in his bedroom when an argument broke out and he said Fred came at him with
00:19:06
the hammer. He claimed he rustled the hammer away from Fred and in self-defense hit him on the head several
00:19:11
times. After being hit with the hammer, Spencer was still struggling, Richard said. So, he put a plastic bag over his
00:19:19
head to quote knock him out. He said it was simply a matter of self-defense in what he thought was a fight for his
00:19:25
life. Uh, investigating officers were pretty [ __ ] skeptical of this because self-defense doesn't often include
00:19:31
esphyxiation. Yeah. And aren't all the hammer hits to the back of the head? Mhm.
00:19:38
That's also a little It's also a little telling. A little sus, I would say. They had found their killer, so now it
00:19:43
was up to a judge and jury to determine whether or not he was telling the truth.
00:19:47
Why the [ __ ] is this guy out and doing it again? Um, because societyy's [ __ ] gross.
00:19:53
That's why this is horrifying. Yeah, it gets worse. Oh, Richard's attorney, Errol Payne, had
00:19:59
hoped to avoid a trial at all. And even the judge actually tried to arrange for a plea agreement with the prosecutor,
00:20:05
uh, Fo Salem, but Richard refused to accept a plea deal and seemed eager to prove himself in court.
00:20:11
Oh boy. The trial started on October 29th, 1973 in Banger Superior Superior Court. Over
00:20:18
the course of several days, Sem called several character witnesses to testify as to Fred's easygoing nature and strong
00:20:25
moral character. He also had the medical examiner go into great detail about the
00:20:30
extent of Spencer's injuries. The prosecutor acknowledged, "Sure, it was possible that Roger was telling the
00:20:36
truth about the initial self-defense claim, but if it was purely a matter of self-defense, why had Richard put a bag
00:20:42
over the victim's head after he'd been subdued?" Yeah. And also, why had he gone to such
00:20:47
great lengths to get rid of the body, clean the crime scene, and all of that rather than report the attack to police
00:20:54
right away? Exactly. The prosecution made a compelling argument for murder and expected an equally strong uh strong
00:21:01
response and defense from Payne. But when the time came for the defense to present their case, Payne didn't have
00:21:08
any follow-up questions for any of the prosecution's witnesses, and he really didn't even call many of his own
00:21:13
witnesses. Actually, just a few days into the trial, he made a motion to reduce the charges from murder to
00:21:19
manslaughter, arguing that the state's evidence didn't support a murder charge, and the judge agreed.
00:21:25
What? He said it was clear Rogers had been provoked and that quote, "The jury could
00:21:30
not find that the actions of the defendant exceeded the crime of manslaughter." I'll have an explanation for you
00:21:38
shortly. I will you? I will. What the [ __ ] It's homophobia. Oh, cuz I'm like, what?
00:21:47
We'll get there. What? We will get there. This man hit another man on the head, back of the head eight times. All of
00:21:55
which, any of which, according to the medical examiner, could have it was the fatal blow.
00:22:00
Mhm. And then esphyxiated him with a bag and dumped his body in a wooded area. Yeah.
00:22:07
After tried to clean up and tried to clean everything up. We're claiming that is not sufficient enough
00:22:13
evidence. They're literally being like, "Well, he provoked him. No, it's manslaughter."
00:22:21
Whoa. Just wait. So, at the opening of the trial, Sem was con confident that he could get a conviction based on the
00:22:28
evidence alone, which Elena just laid out for us. Again, thank you. But within less than a week, that confidence was
00:22:34
undermined when things got even less certain because Rogers took the stand to testify on his own behalf. Despite the
00:22:42
very serious charges, he was remarkably calm, collected, and even persuasive. His lawyer argued that the bludgeoning
00:22:50
of Fred Spencer had been committed, quote, in passion under sudden provocation. And any reasonable man
00:22:56
would have reacted the same way. Oh my. Any reasonable man would have climbed on top of him, hit him in the
00:23:01
back of the head 18 times and then strangled him with a plastic bag over his head.
00:23:05
Wow. It's just reasonable. Yeah, that's just man things, you know. Yeah. Facts. Richard confirmed this and
00:23:10
said, "I didn't know what to do. I wanted very much to go to the police, but by then I felt it would look very
00:23:15
suspicious." Oh, yeah. So, instead, he wrapped the body in a tent and dumped it in the woods.
00:23:20
Yeah. Which which like Yeah, you're right. That doesn't look suspicious. Not at all. No. On November 2nd, 1973,
00:23:27
the jury deliberated for just under three hours before emerging to acquit Richard Rogers of the charges that were
00:23:34
put against him. Shame. Shame. Shame. After the verdict on all of you, shame. Shame. After the verdict was read, he
00:23:46
told a reporter, "I just had no idea how this was going to turn out. I mean, I'm
00:23:49
not guilty, but I am really thankful." And as the jury filed out of the courthouse, he yelled after them,
00:23:54
saying, "Thank you very much. I assure you, you did the right thing." Wow. Yeah.
00:24:03
I'm simply without a thought. You're not alone. Because under the circumstances, and given not only the
00:24:10
evidence, but his own [ __ ] confession to murder, his acquitt came as a surprise to pretty much everyone close
00:24:16
to this case. Wow. But author Elon Green pointed out none of the newspaper coverage suggests
00:24:21
Payne used a gay panic defense, but at least one spectator remembers something to that effect.
00:24:27
In fact, decades later, many residents who were alive at the time did recall that there was some kind of quote
00:24:33
unquote gay angle to the story. Assuming that that's true, his acquitt does make
00:24:38
a lot more sense because in 1973 Maine, it was entirely likely that even the implication that Frederick Spencer made
00:24:46
some kind of pass at Rogers would have been viewed as a justifiable defense of Roger's actions. Gay panic.
00:24:54
Wow. Mhm. Wow. the subject just like is gross and it's when you really like dive into that
00:25:08
like it's just like panic insane one man making a which I'm not saying happened here I'm just saying like the
00:25:15
whole idea of it one man making a pass at another man is justifiable enough for them to say yeah you can hit him on the
00:25:23
head eight times with a hammer and then esphyxiate him and dump his body in the woods
00:25:27
do you know how many But then men who hit on women and end up unc like totally like
00:25:34
sexually assaulting them, making them feel uncomfortable, making them feel in danger. If you were to touch that guy,
00:25:42
you'd have like an assault charge. Mhm. Yep. It happens to women all the time. So, it's totally fine in that sense. But
00:25:48
if but if you're if you're implying that I'm gay, like that logic doesn't reg it's like
00:25:56
how does that make sense to anyone? It doesn't make any sense. It can't it can't make sense.
00:26:00
It only makes sense to homophobes. Like that's wild. So he got away with murder and was able to do all that he did.
00:26:07
Mhm. Whatever the case may have been, he was a free man. And after completing his
00:26:12
graduate studies at the University of Maine, I was like, you stayed? Everyone just like hung out with you after that?
00:26:18
What the [ __ ] But after that, he moved to New York and he started taking nursing courses at Pace University,
00:26:24
which is also just another [ __ ] dichconomy. And then he's just becoming a nurse.
00:26:28
He's a nurse. What? He completed his program in 1979 and that's when he took the job at Mount
00:26:33
Sinai Hospital where he was employed until his arrest in the early 2000s, which is crazy. Discovering that Rogers
00:26:41
had at least one murder in his past put their suspect in a new light. The fingerprints confirmed that if nothing
00:26:47
else, he had been involved in the dismemberment and the disposal of at least Anthony Morero.
00:26:51
Yeah. But when they compared the prince from Toronto to the prince in every other
00:26:55
case, they were a match. Oh [ __ ] Yep. Now, the more investigators dug into Richard's past, the more confident they
00:27:03
were that he was 100%, even without the the fingerprint evidence, definitely the
00:27:08
last call killer. Yeah. When they spoke to one of his ex-boyfriends, a British man who he had
00:27:12
dated briefly in 1996, investigators learned of an incident where the two were out to dinner one night and Richard
00:27:19
suddenly turned to the man and said, "You should really be careful who you who you're with because the police are
00:27:24
out there looking for a serial killer." Ooh. At the time, the ex thought it was just
00:27:29
a joke and a joke and poor taste at that. Yeah. But in retrospect, he said the comment
00:27:34
took on an entirely different and very macob. He said, "Toward the end, I realized something wasn't quite right."
00:27:41
Damn. It would have been unusual for Rogers, or really any serial killer for that
00:27:46
matter, to commit one murder and then stop for two decades only to just start again. But when they learned more about
00:27:51
who he was and his past, the more investigators questioned whether he actually had stopped committing acts of
00:27:57
violence. On a trip to Florida to visit family in 1982, a man named Matthew Pierro dis uh disappeared from a Daytona
00:28:05
Beach gay bar after last call and his body was found a few days later along Interstate 4. He'd been suffocated and
00:28:12
stabbed six times in the chest and back. A few days after that, Richard returned
00:28:18
to New York after having visited family in Florida in that time frame. Holy [ __ ] Then in 1986, the remains of
00:28:25
a man named Jack Andrews were discovered in multiple garbage bags at a rest stop
00:28:29
in Lichfield, Connecticut, just a few hours outside of New York City. He was 100% suspected in both of those deaths,
00:28:37
but unfortunately, there was never enough evidence to officially connect him to those murders.
00:28:42
Wow. But there were other crimes they could connect him to, like the 1988 assault on
00:28:47
a man named Sandy Harrow. According to Harrow, he had met Richard in the uh in early July at the GH Club, which is a
00:28:54
gay bar in Manhattan. Mhm. Sandy noticed Richard standing against the wall of the bar and looking for a
00:29:00
place to sit. So, Sandy made some room for him and they got to chatting. Around 8:00 p.m., Richard suggested they go
00:29:05
back to his apartment and Harold said he seemed nice enough, so he agreed. Back at Roger's apartment, Richard
00:29:12
immediately disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a drink for Sandy, which Sandy remembered being orange
00:29:17
juice or something like that. He said, "I was drinking the orange juice. I didn't taste anything strange, but I
00:29:23
remember passing out and as I fell forward, there was a very dark blue rug on the floor." Oh,
00:29:28
it reminded me of that movie Fresh. Yes. Yeah. Oh, it really does. He said when he woke
00:29:35
up later, hours later, he had been stripped nude and his wrists and ankles were bound with hospital ID bracelets.
00:29:44
I need you guys just to sit with that for a second. Yeah, fully. He woke up completely nude and was bound
00:29:50
at his wrist and ankles with hospital ID bracelets. I hate it. He started to scream and at
00:29:58
that point, Rogers came over and injected him with a needle. So, he lost consciousness for a second time and then
00:30:05
woke up again a few hours later. Rogers had him dressed and left him outside on the sidewalk a few blocks away. What the
00:30:13
[ __ ] Sandy called his friend who picked him up and took him to the hospital. He
00:30:17
was treated at Roosevelt Hospital where they conducted a rape exam and found no evidence of sexual assault.
00:30:23
He's got like Jeffrey Dmer vibes. He does. He very much does. Sandy obviously reported the assault to
00:30:30
the police and Rogers was arrested and charged with kidnapping and assault, but he ra he waved his right to a jury trial
00:30:36
and instead chose a bench trial where for some reason he was acquitted and allowed to go free. Are you [ __ ]
00:30:44
kidding me? I'm not. They just kept letting this They were like, "Yeah, please do more."
00:30:51
Yeah, go ahead. Escalate. Yep. Escalate more. Escalate more. Like what the [ __ ]
00:30:56
Just go ahead and shame on all these people that let him out several times. So, in just a matter of a few weeks,
00:31:04
investigators had gone from a fingerprint a fingerprint match in one of the last call cases to establishing a
00:31:10
thorough and very violent history for their suspect. Detective Cohen and investigators from other agencies
00:31:16
conferred and it was decided that the two New Jersey cases uh the because they had both been found in New Jersey,
00:31:22
Thomas Mkei and Anthony Morero were the strongest in terms of physical evidence and eyewitness testimony from staff and
00:31:28
patrons at the townhouse bar. So the prosecutor planned to charge Richard Rogers with both of those murders.
00:31:34
Yeah. On May 28th, detectives from NYPD's major case squad started monitoring Richard Rogers and shadowing
00:31:41
him as he traveled to and from work and just other random places. To everybody involved, this made the most sense. He
00:31:47
lived in New York, and even though they didn't have crime scenes there, they knew that Thomas Milke and Anthony
00:31:53
Morero had been picked up in Manhattan. So, that part of the case went to the NYPD. In following Rogers, they hoped
00:31:59
that he might lead them to a new location, maybe where the crimes had taken place, or that they might find
00:32:05
additional evidence. But in the two days that they surveiled him, he kind of just
00:32:08
traveled to and from mundane locations. Yeah. So, finally on May 28th, uh the police
00:32:14
commissioner at the time, Bernard Kirk, gave or Carrick, excuse me, gave the order to arrest Richard Rogers for the
00:32:20
murders of Thomas Mke and Anthony Morero. Not wanting to tip him off, detectives from the major uh from Major
00:32:26
case visited him at Mount Si that afternoon and told him they had evidence that he had been a victim of credit card
00:32:32
fraud. Oh my goodness. And they just needed his assistance in catching this horrible individual.
00:32:36
We need you. So he said, "Of course, I will go with you to one police plaza." And they sat
00:32:41
down there in an interrogation room where they revealed that they were in fact actually investigating the murders
00:32:46
of Thomas Volkee and Anthony Morero and that Rogers was their prime suspect. Despite what they knew about his past,
00:32:53
they the detectives still found it hard to believe that the man who was sitting in front of them in this interview room
00:32:59
had brutally killed and dismembered at least five people cuz you just can't picture anyone doing
00:33:05
that. Like even if you know that about this man, you know, like he's very capable of it clearly.
00:33:11
But unlike a lot of the other violent criminals that they had been used to dealing with throughout the years, he
00:33:15
was quiet, he was polite with them, and he seemed timid to them. He was cooperative even to the extent that he
00:33:23
signed all the forms indicating he understood his rights, but he wasn't very forthcoming with useful
00:33:28
information. When New York detectives asked uh why he thought they were eager to speak with him about the homicides,
00:33:34
he didn't show any signs of anxiety or distress and suggested it was maybe because of that 1988 assault with Sandy
00:33:41
or maybe because of the death of Fred Spencer in 1973. Oh, the death. I think you mean murder.
00:33:47
Yeah. But they showed him pictures of the victims and asked him to identify his or to verify his whereabouts when
00:33:52
the murders were committed. And he seemed somewhat compliant, but told them that quote, "Other than recognizing Mr.
00:33:58
Sakara, I don't know if I can help you with anything else." Mhm. So, the conversation went back and forth for a
00:34:05
few more minutes before detectives informed him of the real reason they picked him up. They said, "We have
00:34:10
indisputable evidence, both physical and circumstantial, that links you to all four of these homicides. We literally
00:34:15
know for an absolute fact that you did this. Yeah. Like your palm prints and fingerprints are literally all over
00:34:20
everything. As soon as he heard that, he sat straight up in his chair and two investigators finally appeared to become
00:34:27
guarded. Oh. Two detectives started walking through the details of each murder and gave
00:34:32
their theories as to how things happened and how Rogers might be involved. And he
00:34:36
listened, but he didn't say anything, just nodded to show that he was listening. The interrogation went on for
00:34:42
several hours. They went over graphic details of all the deaths, all the dismemberments, hoping that he would
00:34:47
just give up and confess. But by 12:30 that morning, everyone was exhausted, and he invoked his right to counsel. So,
00:34:54
the interview had to come to an end. Yeah. As soon as the courts opened up the next
00:34:58
day in Ocean County, New Jersey, he was charged with first the first-degree murders of Thomas Bulke and Anthony
00:35:03
Morero, but he refused to wave his right to extradition. So, he was transferred to Riker's Island and held on $1 million
00:35:10
bail. In the meantime, detectives in New York had received a warrant to search his apartment, where they found, among
00:35:17
other things, carpet fibers consistent with those discovered on Anthony Morero's body, heavy duty garbage bags
00:35:23
like those found at all four crime scenes, and a bottle of Versid, which is a benzoazipene commonly used in minor
00:35:30
surgical procedures. Holy [ __ ] But also known as a day rape drug. Damn. uh while s this this just sent me. While
00:35:40
searching through one of the drawers in his bedroom, they also found a series of
00:35:44
Polaroid photographs that looked like they were taken from his bedroom window. And they were photos of shirtless
00:35:50
construction workers who were like working on the road outside his apartment. And on each of the photos, he
00:35:55
had drawn on what seemed to detectives to be stab wounds on the torsos of the men in the picture.
00:36:01
What the [ __ ] Yeah. Yeah, what a sick [ __ ] puppy this man is. But the craziest thing was the news of
00:36:12
his arrest came as an absolute shock to his friends and neighbors. They all flatly rejected the idea that he could
00:36:19
ever be responsible for killing anyone. One neighbor told a reporter from the New York Times, "He's a lovely fellow
00:36:26
who likes antiques and everything that has to do with money." And another said, "Richie would never kill anyone. God,
00:36:32
no." Do we know anyone ever? No. Do we ever know anyone? No. No. No. No. No. No.
00:36:40
Think about this man who you think is lovely. Your great awesome neighbor. Your great awesome neighbor who you talk
00:36:45
to about antiques. Taking pictures of construction workers and drawing stab wounds on them
00:36:51
and also kidnapping men. Like possibly drugging them. Even that though it's like something is
00:36:56
a not like you don't even know that. Yeah. You just don't even know that about him
00:37:01
like that. That's Yeah. Like you don't know people. Think about the amount of conversations
00:37:07
that neighbor probably had with him. Just friendly hanging out. Normal, cordial conversations.
00:37:13
I'm so upset by that. And also like he could have dismembered somebody next door.
00:37:19
Yeah. What? Absolutely. And you had no idea. You had no idea. Yeah. They also all described him as a kind,
00:37:26
generous person who went out of his way to help others. Wow. One person even said he was really
00:37:32
the kind of guy you could trust with your ATM card. I I'm telling you, you can't.
00:37:37
You You definitely can't. But the fact that like people felt that way before they knew what had happened,
00:37:44
but the more news that came out in the days that followed, it became harder to insist that the police had made some
00:37:49
kind of mistake. Wow. It ended up taking several years just with different delays and everything
00:37:53
before he went to trial for the murders of Thomas Mkehey and an Anthony Morero. And in that time, they did offer him a
00:38:00
deal. The deal was that he would plead guilty to two counts of manslaughter. This guy is [ __ ] lucky. A lucky duck.
00:38:06
A lucky duck. Two counts of mans manslaughter. And in exchange, he would receive two 30-year sentences with the
00:38:12
possibility of parole after 15 years. I'm just like confused how we're just like not being like he's he murdered
00:38:20
people, so let's charge him with murder. I'm also like you have a [ __ ] ton of evidence. You have the evidence here.
00:38:25
We're not claiming that these are all self-defense. Like, let's be so for real. I don't know if it was just because at
00:38:31
that point DNA evidence was so new that they maybe thought the jury would have a
00:38:34
hard time understanding it or or what. Very big possibility. But they gave him a solid deal, offered
00:38:41
him a solid deal. And considering the fact that he was facing at least two life sentences and that the case against
00:38:47
him, like I just said, was pretty strong, the deal was a good one. But it wasn't good enough for him. He declined
00:38:53
the offer. What a [ __ ] idiot. Yeah, but remember that's not the first time he's done that.
00:38:58
Damn. On October 26th, 2005, which is crazy. 2005, he went on trial. Wild. Yeah.
00:39:05
He went on trial at the Ocean County Municipal Court in Tom's River, New Jersey. In his opening statement,
00:39:11
prosecuting attorney William Heisler laid out the case for the jury. In the case of the Mahhee murder, they had 16
00:39:17
fingerprints from nine different fingers. And in the Morero case, they had two fingerprints and a palm print on
00:39:24
the bag where Morero's head had been discovered. They also had a mountain of physical evidence like the carpet fibers
00:39:30
and testimony from various witnesses like the bartenders at the Five Oaks and the Townhouse Bar who had seen Rogers
00:39:36
with the victims on the nights they were murdered. Unlike the last time he had been in
00:39:41
court facing a murder charge, he didn't testify on his own behalf this time. In fact, he really didn't react at all as
00:39:48
the prosecution methodically walked the jury through all the evidence against him. This time, there wasn't much the
00:39:55
defense could do but try to inspire some amount of doubt in the jury's minds. They argued that investigators didn't
00:40:01
have any crime scene for any of the murders and that there wasn't any murder weapon.
00:40:04
Oh, then it didn't happen. I'm like, "Okay, but his fingerprints are on the bags."
00:40:08
Yeah. And they said, "Well, it's possible his fingerprints got on the bag in some other way, and simply touching a
00:40:13
bag doesn't make you guilty of murder." I mean, touching a bag that has a dead body in it makes you a suspect at the
00:40:22
very least. And touching two bags that have two separate dead body makes you even more of a suspect.
00:40:26
Yeah. Makes you cuz like what the odds what a bad what you you had some bad luck if you're
00:40:32
touching multiple bags that happen to end up having multiple murder victims inside them. Like, babe, that's not
00:40:38
reasonable doubt. That's really crazy. Let's Let's go ahead and sit down, everybody, and let's calculate together
00:40:45
the odds of that. Yeah. Yeah. I was never great at probability, but I feel like I did.
00:40:49
That one I feel like we could really knock out of the park. Yeah. Well, in the end, the defense put
00:40:54
forth by Roger's lawyers was uh unconvincing at best. Yeah. After two weeks of very graphic,
00:40:59
very heartbreaking testimony, the jury only deliberated for a few hours and returned to the courtroom to find
00:41:04
Richard Rogers guilty on every single charge. [ __ ] that guy. When the verdict was read aloud in the court, he did not
00:41:11
show any emotion and did not say anything because he's a piece of [ __ ] Truly. In late January of 2006, Richard
00:41:18
Rogers was back in the packed Toms River courtroom where he stood before the judge silently as family uh family
00:41:24
members and friends read their victim impact statements for the court. Tracy Mkei, Thomas's daughter, said, "He did
00:41:30
it because he could and because he wanted to. He destroyed the anchor of our family and many of the dreams that
00:41:35
we had for the future." Which is awful. Yeah. My heart goes out to them. Once all the victim impact statements were
00:41:43
read, the judge sentenced Rogers to two full life terms to be served consecutively. Good.
00:41:48
He told Rogers, "To do less would diminish the horror of offenses you've committed, sir."
00:41:52
Yes. It's the purpose of this sentence to do everything within my power to assure
00:41:56
society you never walk free again and that you die in some hole in some prison without ever having freedom again. And
00:42:03
hopefully society will find some of justice in that because there's nothing else that I can do.
00:42:08
What a [ __ ] banger of a judge statement. And then he dropped his gavvel because
00:42:13
that's the fact that he said and that you die in some hole in some prison. He said, "I don't even give a [ __ ]
00:42:20
where." He said, "I don't give a [ __ ] I just want you to rot." Yeah. And it's like the the only thing I want
00:42:25
is that society never has to [ __ ] deal with you again. It's like that there are some people and he is one of
00:42:31
them. Yep. That should never see the light of day again. Absolutely not. Like he's proven his
00:42:36
entire life that he would do this forever. Oh, and he's a brutal if he gets out killer. I mean that the fact that he got
00:42:43
off in that first one, you would think he would shut the [ __ ] up and just live his life and be like,
00:42:48
"Wow, I really I really got out of that. But he's a [ __ ] animal." But he kept going.
00:42:54
Yeah. He's deranged. Yeah. So, he was removed from the courtroom after that and transported to
00:42:59
New Jersey State Prison to begin serving his life sentence, which I think is hilarious because he never wanted to be
00:43:03
extradited there in the first place. And now he has so much fun in New Jersey. In 2008, he appealed his conviction to
00:43:11
the Superior Court of New Jersey who essentially said, "Fuck you." Good. Um, they upheld the lower court's
00:43:17
decision. They were like, "Fuck y'all." He appealed again in 2014, but was again
00:43:20
denied by the court and still to this day rots in some hole in some prison. Amazing. Hopefully we'll die there soon.
00:43:27
Not too soon though. Wanted to rot for a long time. Holy [ __ ] Yeah, it's a really really devastating
00:43:35
case. And you just think like all these men were trying to figure out their sexuality, trying to figure out their
00:43:44
lives, family. Yeah, that's the thing. Like some of them were married, some had kids, some
00:43:50
were living comfortably and finally had, you know, like gotten cool with who they were
00:43:56
and he just took them away from everybody that loved them and took some of them in their darkest
00:44:02
hours. Yeah. Which is awful. Holy [ __ ] He's a true monster. And the fact that I didn't ever know about this
00:44:11
guy is so upsetting. It's crazy. And the fact that like I know he said it before, but it's just
00:44:17
like you can't you can't get it together in your mind that he assaulted somebody
00:44:23
so brutally, killed somebody years before like 10 years before that and got away with it and possibly killed even
00:44:30
more people, but unfortunately there just wasn't enough evidence there. But I'm certain he most likely killed
00:44:35
those people. I wouldn't be shocked at all, you know. Yeah. And it's like how many more people that
00:44:39
did he kill that just didn't they just didn't connect connect, right? Wow. Yeah. I really hope he's rotting in
00:44:44
some prison. What a [ __ ] brutal brutal case and so sad. It was really sad. But I'm so glad he was caught. Me, too.
00:44:52
Holy [ __ ] So, I think we'll do something like maybe spooky after this. Yeah, just give just for a moment.
00:44:58
Yeah, maybe like a guest app. A cool guest app or a spooky. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. And in the meantime, we hope
00:45:05
that you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird, but not so weird that you think you can
00:45:12
just go around doing whatever the [ __ ] you want to do and ending lives. Yeah. Don't be a hateful [ __ ] No. Said it
00:45:18
again. Don't do it. [Music] [Music] [Music]