00:00:41
Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, thank you for listening. I'm your host Nick
00:00:47
and with me as always is a man that would like to remind us all that the US government's been experimenting with pig
00:00:53
men since the '50s. Here is the captain. I'm not afraid to admit that I'm scared
00:00:58
to death of the pig man. It's good to be seen. Good to see you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for telling a friend.
00:01:10
This week we are very happy to be featuring Tramps Like Us by the good folks at Intersect Brewing. This is a
00:01:17
tropical juicy and super-fresh IPA. Somehow it's sweet and bitter at the exact same time. Garage Grade three and
00:01:25
three quarter bottle caps out of five. And let's give some praise to our super-fresh and super-duper fly friends.
00:01:31
First up we have a cheers for Matthew in Ashtabula, Ohio. big we like your jib to Stephanie in
00:01:38
Fort Wayne, Indiana. Next up captain, we have Alex and Paige in Western Australia.
00:01:44
Good day, mate. And a big shout out to Trista in Wichita Falls, Texas. Here we have a cheers for Julie in
00:01:51
Roslyn Heights, New York. And last but certainly but least we have Marla and Pam in the parts that are unknown.
00:02:00
Everyone we just mentioned went to truecrimegarage.com and contributed to this week's beer
00:02:05
fund, and for that, we thank you. I know everybody's on a lockdown, but make sure
00:02:09
you wash your parts unknown. And thanks for uh filling up the b w e d o w r u n beer run beer fund at truecrimegarage
00:02:18
and make sure you go there and sign up on the mailing list and check out the store page, and that is enough of the
00:02:24
bizness. All right, everybody, gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk
00:02:29
some true crime. Portions of the following were taken from a June 1965 Fort Worth
00:03:06
Star-Telegram newspaper article with the headline Houston couple found dismembered in ice
00:03:13
box. The dissected bodies of a quiet elderly couple were found in the refrigerator of
00:03:19
their home. Dead are Fred Christopher Rogers, age 81, a retired real estate man,
00:03:28
and his wife, Edwina, age 79. Their bodies were decapitated and cut into numerous pieces.
00:03:37
The bodies were found after a nephew, Marvin Martin, age 56, told police his phone calls to the house
00:03:44
went unanswered and he found the house locked. Officers Bullock and Barta went to the
00:03:52
house with Barton and entered. They found the one and a half story home disorderly.
00:03:59
Soon after, an officer opened the 5-ft by 3-ft electric refrigerator. On all of the shelves and in the freezer
00:04:07
compartment were the dismembered bodies. There was little food in the icebox. Medical Examiner Henry Eismann believes
00:04:17
the pair were killed 5 days ago. He doesn't know exactly where. Whoever did this apparently took their
00:04:25
time and knew what they were doing. The dismembering was a fairly neat job, he said.
00:04:32
"I must await further examination to speculate whether the killer had a professional knowledge of the human
00:04:39
anatomy." Police do not know what instrument killed and dismembered the couple. There was little blood in the house,
00:04:48
which had been thoroughly washed and cleaned. Homicide Captain Morrison said the
00:04:54
dismembering apparently was done in the downstairs bathtub, although it had no blood in it.
00:05:02
However, tests indicated blood had been on the recently washed bathroom floor. Traces of blood were found on the washed
00:05:10
kitchen floor and on a wooden step that had been recently scrubbed. There was no sign of forced entry to the
00:05:17
house. All doors had been locked with the blinds drawn. Neighbors could not pinpoint when they
00:05:24
last saw the dead pair, only that it was not this week. Martin said the last time he talked to
00:05:31
Edwina on the telephone was 6 days ago. The details of the double homicide were gross and disturbing.
00:05:39
The murders were violent and vicious. The cleanup and concealment of the crimes were messy and tedious.
00:05:47
Who would attack and kill an elderly couple in their own home? Who would go to such great lengths to
00:05:54
delay the discovery? Who could have committed murders so cold? This is True Crime Garage
00:06:02
and this is the story of the ice box murders. This show is never for the squeamish and
00:06:23
we are not the types that revel in the gory details, but when you're talking true crime, sometimes the gory details
00:06:31
are necessary. And we will start off today by going through the autopsy reports of our two victims. So, if you
00:06:39
are eating or about to enjoy a snack, just stop. Stop eating and keep listening. Or if you're like me and you
00:06:47
enjoy this part of the show, then put that sandwich in your mouth. Keep chomping. These autopsies are easier to
00:06:54
listen to if you're drinking a beer, by the way. Mhm. So, the autopsies, Captain, were performed by the Chief
00:07:00
Medical Examiner of Harris County, Texas. This is Henry Eismann, who was quoted in today's trailer.
00:07:08
And because we have two victims, we have two case numbers. Edwina's was case number 65-1615
00:07:17
and Fred's was case number 65-1616. These are the case numbers for the postmortem examination of the body
00:07:27
described as that of an 81-year-old white male. This is Fred Christopher Rogers.
00:07:34
And the examination of the body described in the report as 72-year-old white female, Edwina Rogers, no middle
00:07:44
name listed on the report. First off, I want to address Edwina's age. As some of
00:07:50
you may have picked up on, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram article listed Edwina's age as 79. The medical
00:07:58
examiner's report says she was 72. And I found other credible sources that states
00:08:05
Edwina was 15 years younger than her husband Fred. At best, only one of them is right. 79 seems to be cited the most,
00:08:16
but the autopsy, in which persons who work for the County of Harris, Texas, have to sign off and certify that the
00:08:25
document is true and correct, well, that report says 72 years of age, so we're going to roll with that. Either way,
00:08:32
they're both pretty old. They're old. The brief discovery report reads, "Husband and wife Fred and Edwina lived
00:08:41
at 1815 Driscoll Street in Houston, Texas. They were reported missing and several
00:08:48
days later their dismembered bodies were found stuffed in a large refrigerator at
00:08:53
their home. Some in the deep freezer compartment, others in the sliding tray under the
00:08:59
deep freeze, and larger portions of the bodies on the shelves of the refrigerator.
00:09:05
The examination at the scene was made beginning at 11:30 p.m. on June 23rd, 1965,
00:09:13
and supervision of the removal of the body parts was accomplished at that time. And as stated,
00:09:21
two victims means two reports, and there are six lengthy and descriptive pages for each victim, but I'll simplify. Both
00:09:30
victims were dismembered in the same manner. Take a big body and make it into smaller
00:09:35
pieces and disarticulated through the joints. This mostly means use a nice, sharp, and somewhat precise instrument
00:09:44
to cut through flesh, muscle, and tendons, and then use a good amount of force to pop out at the joints.
00:09:51
This was head, arms, hands, torso, pelvis, thighs, shins, and feet. It was the examiner's findings that
00:10:03
Fred's death was the result of a fractured skull homicide. There were several skull fractures and blunt
00:10:10
lacerations to the scalp. There were fractured bones around Fred's eye sockets, and someone used a sharp
00:10:17
instrument to remove the eyes. This was easily determined by the jagged cut lines left in the skin around the
00:10:25
orbits. Right, but we're assuming this is postmortem. Yes, so he would have been attacked and beat to death, struck
00:10:34
about the head. Mhm. All of this dismemberment is believed to have taken place after death. And we're guessing
00:10:41
that this object is a blunt object, something like maybe a baseball bat or hammer or something like that. Correct.
00:10:49
Again, Edwina was dismembered in practically the same way, but her eyes were not removed. And her death,
00:10:56
however, was much different. It was the examiner's findings that Edwina's death was the result of a gunshot wound of the
00:11:03
head homicide. The gunshot was to the left temporal area of the skull. The path of the
00:11:10
bullet was from 1 in posterior to the left ear. The bullet penetrated the skull,
00:11:16
traveled from left to right through the brain, and exited at the right cheek. Well, let's pause right there for a
00:11:22
second. So, we have two ways of death. One, somebody is bludgeoned to death, the other way,
00:11:31
they're Instantaneous death. Correct. What I'm guessing. So, this could one imply we have two killers
00:11:40
because we have two different ways that these individuals are attacked or they were attacked in different
00:11:46
manners for a reason. It does look like she was struck in the face area as well with a blunt object. I
00:11:56
could not determine from the report if they were able to decide if that was before or after the gunshot. Mhm. But
00:12:03
yeah, you're right. Two seemingly different methods of attack. The weird thing here though, too, is
00:12:10
we talked about some of the neighbors in the trailer saying, you know, we can't recall exactly when the last
00:12:17
time we saw this couple was. We can say that we don't feel that it was this week.
00:12:24
What we don't have is any of the neighbors saying, "I heard a gunshot." Yeah, or we saw anybody
00:12:30
else going in and out of the house. And that's why I think you have that statement from the medical examiner that
00:12:37
we covered in today's trailer in the newspaper article where he says, "We're not 100% sure where they were
00:12:44
killed." He's probably expecting that someone would have heard a gunshot in the area. A small bullet fragment was
00:12:51
recovered from her body as well as a metal fragment. This is from a pair of glasses. Okay, so the victim, Edwina,
00:13:00
would have been wearing these glasses when she was shot. Mhm. And the metal fragment broke off of the glasses and
00:13:08
was lodged in the head as well. But this was their only home. They didn't have like a vacation home or a hunting cabin
00:13:17
or any other place that police think this is where the murders could happen. Correct. This was like a modest home in
00:13:27
a fairly nice neighborhood, but it does not seem that the elderly couple had a lot of money. Right.
00:13:36
And so property, extra properties, vacation homes, a cabin out in the woods, it does not appear that they had
00:13:43
any of those things. Now, we say dismembered, but also really dissected, because some of the organs
00:13:53
and innerds were removed. Mhm. Part of this, Captain, is just going to be kind of necessary as the way that it's
00:14:03
described that the bodies were were cut up into smaller pieces. The in particular, the pelvis being removed
00:14:11
from the torso area. Now, these were not found in the refrigerator, the organs or innerds that
00:14:18
were removed. They weren't found in the refrigerator with the body parts. In fact, these were
00:14:23
not recovered from the home at all. According to the reports, human tissue fragments were recovered from a manhole
00:14:31
located between Morris and Woodhead on Vermont Street days later. This was brought in by Officer Thornton,
00:14:40
and the specimen was found to be that of human tissue, lung, and fat. How would they know that the these would
00:14:48
be in there? In the manhole? Yeah. I think what we have here is this is there's no nice way of putting
00:14:58
this. Mhm. Just go for it. Whoever was dismembering the bodies, they were taking some of these pieces
00:15:07
and flushing them down the toilet. And so it was when they find that these items are missing, Mhm.
00:15:15
probably only find this through the actual autopsy, the medical examination that we're going through, and this is
00:15:22
probably an addendum to their their document here saying the officer brought these in days later. They can go to the
00:15:30
city planner's office or whomever and say, "Okay, show me where these drains run from the homes in this area."
00:15:38
And because these pieces are missing, it may have just been speculation or a good
00:15:44
guess on the investigator's behalf. And they tracked this down and found you know, these these items discarded.
00:15:52
Or the city planner's like an expert and he's like, "You'll literally find these
00:15:57
and if you go down this manhole." Right. Right. Sherlock Holmes was working the the case. And there was another
00:16:05
discovery. This was in a ditch in the 6200 block of Hardy Street. This discovery was made by an officer
00:16:14
Shelbourne. This was long segments of trachea and intestines all heavily infested with maggots. Oh, that's
00:16:24
awesome. Um gross until you said maggots. But is this another situation where they would have gone
00:16:34
down a drain and that's why we find them in this ditch or And kind of flush out into the ditch.
00:16:39
these are these something where somebody had to stop their car and dump these out? The thing is that is interesting to
00:16:48
me. I think that I go with with the first choice there because it doesn't seem that they would have had any type
00:16:55
of lead where they believed somebody left the house with any of these items to discard them later and elsewhere.
00:17:03
Mhm. I think it's simply this is where they washed away to. Right, because here's my point though is we
00:17:11
we have evidence, blood evidence that there was blood obviously on the bathroom floor.
00:17:17
Possible blood evidence that there's blood in the tub, the downstairs bathroom. But cops in this case
00:17:26
over and over say it's possible they were murdered somewhere else. And to me, I don't understand that statement.
00:17:34
Because everything to me you have head wounds. So you're going to have masses massive
00:17:43
amounts of blood. So why would the person kill them out in a field have massive amounts of blood
00:17:51
put them into a vehicle where they're going to have more blood evidence all over their vehicle take them back to
00:17:58
their house. back to their home. Dismember them. It seems like everything happened within side their home.
00:18:05
Absolutely. I think this is just a situation of the police going, "You know what? We're pretty certain this all went
00:18:12
down inside the house. The only thing that makes us question that is no one in the immediate area reported hearing a
00:18:20
gunshot. We've asked, "Did it Did you hear a gunshot?" Yeah, but it could have been
00:18:25
right a silencer or a man-made silencer. Yeah, they say no and so I think it's you know, we're 99% positive. We're just
00:18:33
not going to lock ourselves into a statement to the public that says the couple was killed in their home because
00:18:40
we don't have to. Mhm. And so going through these autopsies Look, if you're uh working on a diet
00:18:51
that's a good way to stick to your diet. Have no issues straying from the diet. Just read an autopsy report.
00:18:57
about the maggots. Yeah, and you and you will fast. You will be fasting. All right, let's get back to the
00:19:01
maggots, you maggot. Okay, so I wanted to go through that summarized version, my summarized
00:19:08
version of the autopsy reports because this is an unsolved case and rarely do you get such a report in an open case.
00:19:17
Let's get into the the discovery details, the discovery of the bodies. What is the most important thing in
00:19:24
these unsolved cases or at least one of them is the details of the discovery. What evidence can be found and how can
00:19:32
the details help to lead us to the perpetrator or possibly perpetrators of the homicides.
00:19:41
As for the details of this crime scene and the discovery, well, you heard some of it during the trailer. But let's get
00:19:49
into the rest. Now, it's always fascinating to me how dramatically different the early details are from the
00:19:58
actual details. And I think we see this a little more when it comes to these older cases.
00:20:05
Sometimes I think it's simply some beat reporter filling some of the blanks in in a rush
00:20:13
to get to the press in time. Here, the early reports were pretty simple. And to me, they sound very 1960s
00:20:23
tough Texas cop type stories. And it goes something like this. On Wednesday, June 23rd, 1965, at the
00:20:31
request of the Rogers' nephew, Marvin Martin, Houston police went to the elderly couple's home on Driscoll
00:20:38
Street. And upon receiving no response to knocking, police bust down the front door to the home, immediately noticing
00:20:46
the foul stench of death coming from the kitchen. Officers investigated where they found the refrigerator door
00:20:53
slightly ajar, packed so full of body parts that one could not close the door completely.
00:21:00
They immediately were aware that both Fred and his dear wife, Edwina, were murdered and dismembered in their home.
00:21:08
Okay, so even though it was reported this way, that is not at all how this went down.
00:21:18
So, yes, police were responding on a basic welfare check that was brought about by the way of the elderly couple's
00:21:27
56-year-old nephew, Marvin Martin. Police did find the home secured, the blinds drawn, the house dark.
00:21:37
But, they did not need to bust down the front door. This is a smaller two-story home with
00:21:44
the second floor so small that the papers accurately describe the house as a one-and-a-half-story home.
00:21:51
The second floor is two small bedrooms, a bathroom, and a storage room. The first floor, ground level, is a
00:21:59
kitchen, dining room, living room, a full bath, and two more bedrooms. The garage is located in the backyard.
00:22:07
It is an unattached garage. And there were two vehicles that both appear to not be operable sitting in the
00:22:15
driveway. I say this because one of the descriptions I found, Captain, has both of these vehicles up on blocks.
00:22:24
There were three doors from the outside to the inside of the first floor of the home.
00:22:33
There is the front door that goes from a small vestibule to the living room. There is a side door. This is nearest
00:22:40
the driveway that goes directly into the kitchen area. And there is a back door that goes from
00:22:47
the backyard to the small back bedroom on the first floor. The front and side doors were found to
00:22:55
be locked. The back door to the back bedroom was not locked. However, someone had certainly
00:23:03
Well, they didn't want people to come in or anyone coming in that door because someone took the time to stack heavy
00:23:09
flower pots and stack them right up by the door. So, if you try to push the door open, these
00:23:16
heavy pots would prevent you from doing so. The police didn't bust down the front
00:23:21
door. They simply pushed their way through the back door. Once inside, they were not greeted with
00:23:28
that foul stench of death. What they found in the kitchen was food and items that one would expect to find
00:23:35
in the refrigerator. Instead, they were left on the countertops and on the dining room table and on top of the
00:23:41
refrigerator. So, somebody had to make room. Correct. This leads to the curiosity of
00:23:48
well, all of this stuff was left out. Why or what is in the fridge in place of these items? Mhm. So, the officer opened
00:23:57
the fridge. It's like It was like this What's in the box? Yeah, and boom. What's in the box?
00:24:04
Absolute horror. Well, could you imagine? This next part is quite interesting to
00:24:10
me. The officers very quickly realized that Mrs. Rogers is dead. That she's been murdered.
00:24:17
This likely that they recovered her It wasn't a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
00:24:24
Right. That they recovered her head first from the contents of the fridge. Mhm. So, they, the officers upon making
00:24:32
this discovery, they actually put out a bolo alert, a be on the lookout for her 81-year-old
00:24:39
husband Fred Rogers. They just found his wife dead in their refrigerator in their home and police
00:24:45
want to ask him why. Right. So, one victim and boom, we have our first suspect, Fred Rogers.
00:24:54
Well, this lead is short-lived because after the bolo goes out, they realize, "Wait,
00:25:02
there are too many parts in this fridge. There has to be more than one person in
00:25:07
here." And then of course they realize that their first suspect, Fred Rogers, is actually their second victim.
00:25:16
This will quickly lead them to their next and best suspect, Charles Frederick Rogers.
00:25:22
This is the elderly couple's grown, 43-year-old son. Charles, or to some, Chuck Rogers.
00:26:00
All right. Cheers to everybody that's drinking. Whether it's a coffee, alcohol, liquor,
00:26:08
beer, or just uh or a non-alcoholic drink. I have every one of those things lined
00:26:13
up in front of me right now. You need to start cleaning your your desk a little bit better.
00:26:19
It's going to be about to get wet and wild. Cheers to everyone. All right. So, I think Captain, some background
00:26:26
information is very much needed right here. We have our victims and we have our suspect. And they they only have one
00:26:35
kid. Right? Well, they did have two at one time, and that's what we're going to get
00:26:41
into here. So, again, all sources have Fred Rogers as 81 years old at the time of his death. Most sources have Edwina
00:26:49
at 79 years old. And what makes this even more difficult to determine is their gravestones. From my
00:26:57
understanding, they had just one gravestone for the both of them because they died at the same time. And this
00:27:05
gravestone has no dates on it. It does not have a birthday or the date of the death. It simply says the Rogers.
00:27:15
The funeral arrangements were paid for by Edwina's brother Edwin. Now, Wikipedia list Fred Rogers, Fred
00:27:22
Christopher Rogers as born January 19th, 1884. And Edwina Iver Rogers, born October
00:27:33
8th, 1892 with no real reference listed for that information. However, this would be more in line with
00:27:40
the autopsy reports. Fred and Edwina had two children. A son and a daughter. Their son, Charles, lived with them at
00:27:51
the time of their murders. That is why the bolo, the be on the lookout, quickly went from Fred to Charles once they
00:28:00
located Fred's remains alongside of his wife. Mhm. Now, they have to believe they being law enforcement
00:28:10
the high probability that the 43-year-old man, the only other person that lives in the house, is likely
00:28:17
either another victim that is missing from the crime scene, or he's responsible for this and he's fled.
00:28:27
Sadly, their daughter was deceased and had been for years. The daughter, Betty, died in a car wreck
00:28:33
back in 1929 during a family vacation. The Roger family dynamic was pretty hostile and to me
00:28:44
really just very sad. The three, Fred, Edwina, and Charles, are described to not have gotten along
00:28:53
very well, and that's about as polite as you can put it. In fact, most reports put it that the
00:28:59
three hated each other and left no room for any other assessment of the situation. Mhm.
00:29:06
I say it's sad to me because I could not imagine living in a modest home with two other
00:29:12
people and all three have a very strong dislike for each other, so much so that it's reported that they were
00:29:21
extremely rude to one another and at at most times just downright shitty to one another. Mhm. I think you go through
00:29:28
phases, you know, where your parents are your parents. You respect them, you disrespect them,
00:29:34
you you think they're smart, you think they're idiots, you go back and forth, but eventually you become an adult and
00:29:41
you realize how many things they've done for you. And and then at some point you just
00:29:47
really become friends with them. And it seems like they never got to that that place in this family. And you want
00:29:55
wonder, is this because of, you know, there's speculation that there was abuse going on in this family for years
00:30:02
or is this some kind of reaction to the trauma of this family losing one of their members?
00:30:10
So, what I'm doing here, Captain, is taking information from several different sources and overlapping it, trying to
00:30:20
come up with a conclusion of what the family dynamic was. From what I can see and and trying to be
00:30:27
fair to all of those sources because they're not reporting the exact same things.
00:30:33
But from what I can see, it appears that that Fred and Charles, father and son, that these two did not like each other
00:30:42
at all and had not for a long long time. There were suggestions that Fred was abusive especially to the son, to
00:30:53
Charles. It's been said that he could be abusive physically as well as verbally.
00:31:01
I don't know. There was never any reference that he was abusive to his wife. But it also seems like she did not get
00:31:09
along with her husband or her son. But but more so that she was a little bit caught in the middle if that makes
00:31:17
sense. Mhm. If Charles Look, he didn't he lived with his parents, but by all accounts he didn't
00:31:23
speak with them. But it it is said that if he were to have to speak with one of them, it would
00:31:30
be mom and not dad. And dad was old. He's 81 by this time and he it appears he's disliked and hated the son who
00:31:41
shares the same opinion for years. But again, look if you have this little bit of information and we
00:31:49
know what we know from the autopsy, you start going okay, is it possible that there's one only one attacker here? And
00:31:56
if he had some kind of different level of respect or I guess love I guess would be a weird
00:32:04
way to put it. Or hatred. Or hatred, a different level of hatred towards his mother than his
00:32:10
father, then you could see okay, well, I'm going to have a little bit of mercy on her and
00:32:17
make sure that her death is quick. Mhm. And father's death I I'm beating him to death. I mean, what do
00:32:25
you say? Over 10 blows to the skull? That seems accurate and that is um a fascinating find by you there. It's it
00:32:34
is. It's two very different methods of death and it almost it's almost showing what the attacker
00:32:41
thinks of each victim as the attack is going about. We have Fred Rogers, his attack seems much more personable, much
00:32:50
more violent. And Edwina's is quicker with the bullet to the head. And then we see even during the
00:32:58
dismemberment of the two bodies, they are treated somewhat differently Mhm. with Fred's eyes having been removed.
00:33:07
Someone took the time to use a sharp small instrument to dig out the eyes. Now, I should point out that it was
00:33:18
probably This this I can't even believe these words are coming out of my mouth. It
00:33:23
probably was not very difficult to do because it looks like all the blows to Fred's head that
00:33:33
killed him were around the eye areas and in the forehead. So, very much the center of the face because the the
00:33:43
cheekbones and the bones around the eye sockets were very much fractured all the
00:33:50
way around. In fact, police believe that a claw hammer was used in the attack on
00:33:58
Fred, and again, Edwina was struck once, at least once that they could determine with some
00:34:04
type of blunt object to the head. It very likely was the same instrument that was used to kill Fred.
00:34:10
There's quite a few crime scene photos that you can find on Google. I will post those at our Instagram, Twitter, and
00:34:18
Facebook at True Crime Garage. They're They're not graphic by any means, but it does
00:34:25
give you a sense of the house, um what the kitchen looked like, what the refrigerator looked like, what what
00:34:33
these two individuals look like. And you know what's fascinating to me, and it's just something that's really
00:34:40
truly so simple that you don't you wouldn't think about it. This is not something that that the average Joe
00:34:46
would analyze or consider. But we've done 440 episodes, four more than 440 episodes so
00:34:55
far. I am shocked at how often a hammer is described as a murder weapon. Mhm. And I think it's just for
00:35:05
the simple fact that it's something that is available in almost every home. There happens to be one there, and it's
00:35:14
a deadly weapon, and the the captain is just is raising a hammer Right. right now.
00:35:21
Slowly. And He's walking towards me now. But if you go back to like the 1700s, the 1800s, and you see time and time
00:35:29
again that there's all of these axe murders, and you go, "What the hell's going on?
00:35:35
There must be some serial killer axe murderer on the loose." No, it was just everybody had one. Every house, every
00:35:43
home, every yard had an axe, and when things got crazy and somebody lost their [ __ ] and went after somebody, they
00:35:52
picked up the nearest weapon that they could find. Yeah, I think that with like you were saying, back in the day,
00:36:00
but also like what weapon did some of these people use to dismember their their dinner.
00:36:08
Because, you know, back in the day you you you had to catch and grow your own dinner. Oh, you mean I see what you
00:36:15
mean. You lost me there for a second. Oh, what do you think? Not that you're eating
00:36:21
humans, Right, right. but you but at some point you had to you had to hunt down a deer, now what do
00:36:27
you dismember the deer with? You know. Well, let's dive into their personal lives a little bit because we have Fred
00:36:36
who the newspaper said was a real estate man. And look, the further you go back in history, the easier it is for someone
00:36:45
to pose as somebody that they're not. There's not things that were extremely well documented at at certain times,
00:36:53
especially the further you go back. So, often back in the day you are or you were who you said you were. Yeah.
00:37:01
You could pose as somebody else, you could give a false identity, you could give a false job, false career if you
00:37:07
wanted. Most things that I could find here state that yes, he probably had some real estate dealings.
00:37:15
But it seems like that was more of a front for what his real job was, which it appears that he was involved in as as
00:37:25
a bookie, in illegal gambling, and at times probably a con man. Mhm. A fraud, a swindler.
00:37:34
Right. And just again, right when you read that, you start going well, who's capable of something this
00:37:42
vicious? We hear all the time stories of mob or local mob. They're very capable of something like
00:37:51
this. And again if you're if he's the one that has the debt if he is the one that brought this upon his
00:38:01
family he gets 10 blunt blunt um he gets 10 blunt strikes to the skull, his wife gets shot real quick.
00:38:13
They're both getting dismembered. But maybe that you know, does his son have any involvement in his work? Is
00:38:21
this a a statement piece to anybody else around to say we don't play around? Mhm. Well, and especially in his younger
00:38:31
years, if these if this information is true, and I don't have much of a reason to not believe it,
00:38:38
if he if Fred Rogers in fact was a bookie and spent most of his years as a bookie, he's the one taking the
00:38:45
bets, and that might show you or give you an insight into his personality when he was a younger man.
00:38:53
Maybe he was able to be an enforcer on debt collection. Then we have Edwina, who seems to be a
00:39:01
little more on the up and up. Now, unfortunately, given her old age, again, it doesn't appear that these two
00:39:09
this elderly couple was doing very well financially, because she's still working, and she's working a job that
00:39:16
seems to be legit, as where Fred, who knows. Edwina, from my understanding, and I
00:39:23
couldn't I don't have the company name or brand name in my notes. I failed to put that down, but
00:39:32
she was some type of sales person, and I don't think that this was a oh, you have
00:39:37
to show up and work a 9:00 to 5:00 at the local department store sales person. This appears to me as more of a out on
00:39:45
your own door-to-door type of sales, where she was selling things that were like home
00:39:51
goods, as well as smaller appliances, blenders, and things of that nature. Most of this could probably be
00:39:58
conducted, again, door-to-door or via catalog sales, and she takes some type of commission from this.
00:40:05
Mhm. It sounds to me like she only worked this job one or two days a week, and I'm
00:40:11
filling in those blanks there for you, Captain, because what we don't have here is we don't have an employer saying
00:40:17
they never showed up to work. Edwina never showed up to work and and that's what notified us that something was
00:40:22
wrong. No, it was the nephew that she seemed to have some type of relationship, close relationship with,
00:40:29
that raises the red flags. Let's go back to that family vacation in 1929 because it is said that that is
00:40:37
where some of the hate that Charles had for his father stems from. It is said that Charles blamed his father, Fred
00:40:46
Rogers, for the death of Charles' sister, Betty, even though Fred was not the one driving the vehicle in the
00:40:54
vehicle accident. A family friend was driving the car when Fred yelled at the driver. This because a deer jumped in
00:41:03
front of the vehicle. This caused the wreck and then unfortunately the wreck resulted in the little girl's death.
00:41:12
So, if the Rogers did not like their son, why let the grown man live there? He's 43 years old, let him get his own
00:41:20
place and take care of himself, right? Well, might be the one that's financially
00:41:25
responsible for you guys. That's right. That's when Lee Corso jumps in and says,
00:41:29
"Not so fast, my friend. Not so fast." Well, there are two versions of the story and either way this will make more
00:41:36
sense later as we get through the family background information. And and let me pause real quick.
00:41:43
If you think you know where this is going, you don't. Let me just warn you. There's a There's some twists and turns
00:41:51
and this case is super fascinating. I think there's some people in Texas that know where this is going. But,
00:41:57
outside of that area, I would be be shocked if if anybody else Yeah, this this one is just not reported
00:42:04
as much as I After we get done with, you know, the research for the week, I started
00:42:10
thinking this this really should be discussed more. So, the three of them did not live
00:42:17
together because Charles, the son, was a failure and needed a shack up with mom and dad. That's like our generation. You
00:42:25
see that a lot. Uh people not doing so well and they got to move back in and out of Hey, some
00:42:30
people are moving back in to get rid of debt. So, not everybody that lives with their
00:42:36
parents is is doing a bad job. Now, some of them are failures. I should be clear on that. Some of them are very
00:42:42
nice, respectful people that have chosen to move back in with mom or dad or both
00:42:46
to take care of them. So, hats off to the good ones out there. This appears, Captain, to be very much
00:42:54
the opposite of that. The two versions of this story go like this. One, Charles owned half of the house
00:43:01
as he paid off his parents' mortgage. Okay. The other version is straight-up that it was Charles's home.
00:43:10
Right. And that his parents needed to live with him. They weren't doing so well. And maybe it was their home at
00:43:16
some point and they couldn't take care of it. So, then he decided, "Okay, well, I'll pay for it, but if I'm going to pay
00:43:22
for it, I I need to own it." And Charles, while it seems questionable and really
00:43:30
up for grabs what he was doing occupationally at the time of his parents' murders,
00:43:37
he lived a fairly successful life. In 1942, Charles enrolled at Texas A&M University. He did attend for some time,
00:43:46
but a while later dropped out. He then enrolled at the University of Houston, where he earned a Bachelor of Science
00:43:53
degree in nuclear physics. Charles served this greatest of nations fighting for our freedoms in World War
00:44:02
II, regarded as the deadliest conflict in human history, resulting in somewhere between 70 and 85 million fatalities.
00:44:11
During World War II, Charles Rogers was a pilot in the United States Navy and also served in the Office of Naval
00:44:19
Intelligence. After the war, he worked as a seismologist for Shell Oil Company. What's a seismologist?
00:44:28
Well, we're going to get into that. It sounds like he worked there for about 9 years. Now,
00:44:33
this is where things start to go off the rails, because this is a really good job
00:44:39
and Charles was said to be really good at this job. Yeah. So, when he abruptly quit
00:44:47
this job that he was successful at in 1957 and giving no explanation as to why he
00:44:54
was quitting, this was quite the surprise to everyone. He did go on to work for himself in the
00:45:02
same capacity, but on a self-employed contractor basis. So, it's very difficult to pin down how much
00:45:10
work he did and for who and for how long. And didn't he also speak like seven languages? He did.
00:45:18
That's it's listed he spoke seven languages. Charles was typically described as odd at the time of the
00:45:25
murders. He was regarded by most as a hermit and a recluse. Some of the neighbors said they saw so
00:45:33
little of Charles Rogers Uh-huh. that they didn't even really know that he lived at the house.
00:45:40
Friends and associates of Charles later said that he was extremely intelligent. Some reports even put Charles at having
00:45:49
a genius-level IQ. So, he would be up there with the captain and the other fancy pants. Yeah, yeah.
00:45:56
Uh IQ level of two. Um but he He had this this knack for his job where he could find oil, right? Hugh
00:46:08
Gardnier, I hope I said his name right, a brilliant man in his own right described Charles as the goose that lays
00:46:15
the golden eggs. This because Charles could tell you where to find minerals on a property. Charles possessed an
00:46:23
invaluable talent for finding gas, oil, and gold for companies that he worked for. Wow.
00:46:32
And as you noted, it is reported that Charles spoke several different languages and had an interest in ham
00:46:39
radios. Uh, let's just be clear. I I saw it reported somewhere that they said seven, Mhm. not several.
00:46:48
Seven. That's a lot of different languages. Well, And he was also was a pilot, right? He
00:46:54
had his pilot's license and everything. Yeah, he was a pilot. He he flew for the
00:46:58
Navy in World War II and it sounds like even after the war he maintained a pilot's license.
00:47:06
There are reports out there that he owned a small plane, a Cessna, and this would be used for work and for
00:47:14
travel for work. The languages are interesting because it's noted that he worked for the Office of Naval
00:47:22
Intelligence and often it people are required to speak more than one language when working those
00:47:30
types of jobs. Right. For the Navy or the armed forces, but also what comes into play here is the
00:47:37
his his hobby of the ham radio. So for for those that don't know, ham is a is a is a weird term that that was kind of a
00:47:46
slang term. It's basically it's actually called amateur radio. And according to an estimate made in 2011 by the American
00:47:56
Radio Relay League. 2 million people throughout the world are regularly involved with amateur radio.
00:48:04
About 830,000 amateur radio stations are located in the Americas. But then you have hundreds of thousands
00:48:14
of these amateur radio stations that are in Africa, Europe, Asia, and so on. So,
00:48:23
and that may come into play here as far as him being able to speak multiple languages.
00:48:31
So, what you're saying is that he was probably fascinated by these stations and then learned how to speak their
00:48:37
language by listening to the radio. Well, and from my understanding, too, and forgive me to any of the amateur
00:48:44
radio enthusiasts out there, I believe that this is also a form of communication, that it's not just
00:48:51
something that you listen to, but you may also broadcast or communicate in some manner with these people from
00:49:01
what's really interesting, all around the world. So, this was podcasting of the 1950s.
00:49:07
There you go. Back to the crime scene. By 1965, Charles, by most reports, was unemployed
00:49:17
and living with his elderly parents, or they were living with him at their Montrose neighborhood of Houston.
00:49:25
He's described as a recluse. His cousin Marvin Martin said that he thought Charles was an electrician, but didn't
00:49:32
believe he was working for anyone at the time of the murders. And even though Martin appeared to have
00:49:37
been somewhat close with Edwina, it does not appear that he was close to Fred or
00:49:43
Charles. In fact, Martin told the newspapers that he could not remember the last time that the two of them even
00:49:50
spoke. And to give you an idea of how little the Rogers thought of their son, remember some neighbors said they saw so
00:49:59
little of Charles that they did not know that he lived in the house. Some neighbors said they never saw
00:50:06
Charles and and the Rogers, his parents, never spoke of Charles to the point that
00:50:11
some of the neighbors were unaware that the Rogers even had a son. Wow. Just I just kind of bizarre stuff here. Yeah,
00:50:19
but it seems like the parents were pretty bizarre and then they had a bizarre son. The apple didn't fall too
00:50:26
far from the tree. It's reported that even though they lived under the same roof, it's believed
00:50:31
that Charles did not speak with his parents and had not done so in a long time, at least verbally. Charles was
00:50:39
reported to have communicated with his parents by way of notes slipped under the door to his bedroom.
00:50:47
If he needed to communicate something, he wrote it down and passed the note under the door, and if somebody picked
00:50:52
it up and read it, they did. And same thing with Edwina, if she wanted to tell Charles something, jotted it down on a
00:51:00
note, slide it under the door, and it's said that often she didn't even know when sliding these notes under the door
00:51:07
if Charles was even present, if he was home or not. Right. And Charles avoided his parents by
00:51:14
leaving the home before dawn and not returning until after dark. The very tricky thing here
00:51:24
and another mystery, look, the deeper you go and the deeper you dig in this story, there's just more and more
00:51:32
mystery to Charles and to his life. One of those mysteries is it's reported that he was gone all hours of the day,
00:51:43
12, 15, 16 hours a day. No one really knows where he went or how he spent his time. Yeah, or where he was
00:51:52
getting his money. Others report that Charles was known for taking long solo walks all of the time.
00:52:00
I think given his expertise and his talent for making other people money, I have to suspect here, Captain, that
00:52:11
there's a good chance that Charles was working somewhere and he just chose not to communicate this to others or so saw
00:52:19
no reason to speak to his parents and relatives about what he was doing. On June 23rd, 1965, when the Houston
00:52:29
police officers forced their way into the Rogers home, finding the dismembered limbs and torsos and later discovering
00:52:37
the couple's organs in nearby sewers, the organs had been removed, cut up, and flushed down the toilet. Charles was
00:52:44
nowhere to be found. Oddly enough, the medical examiner determined that Fred and Edwina Rogers had been killed on
00:52:53
June 20th. This was Father's Day. Mhm. Based on the autopsy, the crime scene, and the
00:53:00
evidence, investigators believed that Fred was killed by blows to the head with a claw hammer. Edwina had been
00:53:07
beaten and shot execution style in the head. Police further said that the bodies were
00:53:13
dismembered in the bathroom by a person with some knowledge of anatomy. There was little blood in the house and
00:53:21
it appeared it had been thoroughly cleaned after the murders. What little blood that was found led to Charles
00:53:29
Rogers' bedroom. There, police found a blood-stained keyhole saw. Investigators believed that Charles
00:53:37
killed his parents and spent a good deal of time in the house, maybe even for days after having killed them.
00:53:45
He dismembered them and cleaned up all of the blood or best he could. Several reports say that he staged the house to
00:53:52
appear like the house had been robbed. Although I couldn't find the details of what was staged. Right. It is thought
00:54:00
that he locked both the front and side door and the back door, the lock was broken.
00:54:07
So he was not able to lock and secure this door, so he stacked the flower pots against this door and then exited the
00:54:16
home through a window, which was later found open when police arrived with Marvin.
00:54:23
Maybe the window left open was part of the staged robbery. The other reports was that the house was in disarray, so
00:54:31
maybe he scattered things out about the house to make it look like people were opening up the cabinet drawers and going
00:54:38
through things in the home looking for valuables. A search for the Rogers was launched and
00:54:45
a warrant was issued for Charles Rogers as a material witness to the crime. It's
00:54:51
so strange and starting to make me wonder if if this guy is working in in oil, let's say. There
00:55:00
there's money there. Is it possible that he even had a second home or something? Like that he
00:55:07
"My parents are losers and they can't take care of their own house, so I'll pay for that." That's why people didn't
00:55:15
see him that often. Because he he lives somewhere else. I'm just saying it's hypothetical. Well, I I think so much so
00:55:23
that you're right because there is evidence that he owned property elsewhere. Now, the information I was
00:55:31
able to collect does not tell me that there's a structure or a house on this property, but somewhere he
00:55:37
owned a decent amount of land. Okay. And that might play into some of the motive
00:55:44
for these homicides along with some other things. But I want to quickly go through some
00:55:50
other items that were found at the home because this is how police are going to kind of theorize how these homicides
00:55:57
went down and what Charles Rogers did to cover his own tracks before fleeing. Now, mind you, they stated that he had
00:56:05
spent a good deal of time in the home cleaning up this mess before he fled. I don't know when exactly this guy left
00:56:15
the home if he killed his parents. It seems like police are pretty hard on the stance that he could have been there for
00:56:23
up to 3 days. I couldn't find any items that would tell me how they came to that
00:56:30
conclusion. Sometimes it's something as simple as we found unread newspapers on the front porch
00:56:37
and the first one was found on this date. And the rest of the newspapers were in
00:56:43
the trash or found inside the home. Right. Or they were not collected or something.
00:56:48
Yeah, and it seems like they believe that they were killed either late on Saturday night or early on Sunday, which
00:56:56
would have been Father's Day. But some of the other items found in the home were a toaster oven, a coffee pot, and a
00:57:06
hot plate. This is only important because it adds to what we're being told about the
00:57:12
family dynamic. All three of these items were found in Charles's bedroom. Adding to proof that he didn't speak to
00:57:21
his parents, he didn't communicate with them. He probably was setting things up in his room and had done so for a long
00:57:27
time so that once home, he didn't have to leave that room for much of any reason at all. He had a bathroom right
00:57:35
next to his bedroom and it was said that he would use the hot plate, the toaster
00:57:40
oven, and the coffee pot to prepare food in his room. So, he didn't have to leave. He didn't get have to go down to
00:57:46
the kitchen to see mom and dad. Also found in the house were two plastic buckets that were full of clothing.
00:57:56
Now, this clothing were bloody pants and a bloody shirt presumably used during the attack and or
00:58:03
dismemberment of the parents. Also found was a raincoat and it's believed that he
00:58:08
put on this raincoat before he started taking apart the bodies. Like Patrick Bateman.
00:58:16
Yeah. Yeah, very much like Patrick Bateman. What we also have that I found to be very interesting, the the pistol
00:58:26
and it's believed that the pistol that was used to kill Ed Buelna was a .22 caliber pistol. I have the model written
00:58:33
down somewhere, but continuing on the pistol was found on a nightstand along with some bullets and some
00:58:42
ammunition. One thing that I find intriguing here and it's not to say that that anyone's
00:58:48
theories are not correct because one theory is that that Charles decided he had to
00:58:56
decapitate his mother because he wanted to recover the bullet that was used to kill her so that it
00:59:04
couldn't be linked to any other potential crimes. Right. That theory is good and probably could
00:59:11
still be true even though we have this statement. We went through the autopsy report that says that the bullet or at
00:59:18
least a good portion of it exited through the right cheek. So, it may not have been necessary to go
00:59:24
to all that work just to recover the bullet. We did also say in that autopsy report that a bullet fragment was
00:59:32
discovered inside the body. So, maybe that was the purpose for doing so. I think really what we have here likely
00:59:42
seems to me like he needed to conceal the bodies themselves and make his getaway.
00:59:49
But, that bullet thing is interesting because that's something that we talked about when we covered Russell and
00:59:55
Shirley Dermond, their case, where it was thought that Russell, who was killed in the garage, and then
01:00:02
decapitated after death, the head never found, the belief has always been in that case that the head was removed from
01:00:10
the crime scene simply so that no one could identify the bullet or bullets that killed the poor man. What else was
01:00:17
found in the home? In the kitchen area, a toolbox was discovered, and inside the
01:00:24
toolbox, it contained a hammer, a saw, a razor, and all of these items along with the
01:00:33
pistol that was found at the crime scene are believed to have been used in the murder and dismemberment of both Fred
01:00:41
and Edwina Rogers. Thanks for joining us here in the garage. If you need more of the captain,
01:00:55
more of the colonel, download the Stitcher app. All of our episodes are free, and check out our show called Off
01:01:01
the Record. Join us tomorrow back here in the garage. Until then, be good, be kind, and don't litter.
01:01:45
Mhm.