Prints Among Thieves

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Speaker 4 The murder of an eccentric millionaire was not entirely a surprise. He flaunted his wealth and cared little about personal security.
The evidence clearly indicated robbery.

Speaker 4 But investigators wondered if there was more.

Speaker 4 Battle Creek, Michigan is home to one of the largest breakfast food makers in the world. Some call it Cereal City.

Speaker 4 80-year-old Robert Rogers lived his entire life in Battle Creek. Through some real estate investments and his ownership of a small trucking business, he was a millionaire many times over.

Speaker 4 He was a tough old bird. He never pulled any punches.
He was always a son of a bitch to me. Rogers was stubborn, too.
He always carried large sums of money and didn't care who knew it.

Speaker 4 He would joke that he would have several thousand in this pocket, several thousand in a pants pocket, and a couple more thousand in his back pocket, and he generally did.

Speaker 4 Not surprisingly, Rogers became a target for local drug gangs and petty thieves. He was a victim several times of robberies.
They would take his money from him, beat him up.

Speaker 4 His house had been broken into a few times also.

Speaker 4 So,

Speaker 4 yeah, it was a problem for him, but he didn't change his pattern, it seemed like he still carried the large sums of money.

Speaker 4 Sharon Zachary lived next door to Rogers and acted as his caretaker. Sharon Zachary had become almost like a daughter to him.
She would take care of him. She would look in on him.

Speaker 4 She would come and visit him. It worked out nicely until the day Sharon Zachary stopped by Rogers' home and found that it had been broken into.

Speaker 4 What's the problem? We have an elderly gentleman.

Speaker 4 rubbed and it's been broken into. The back sliding glass window is broken.

Speaker 5 My husband yelled for him, but he wouldn't answer.

Speaker 4 When police arrived, they found Robert Rogers on the living room floor. He had been beaten to death.
The person that committed his crime did not want any possibility of Mr.

Speaker 4 Rogers to be alive to identify the perpetrator. It looked like a piece of firewood was used to break the rear sliding glass door.

Speaker 4 Drawers and closets had been ransacked. But if the motive was robbery, the perpetrator had not been entirely successful.

Speaker 4 After the homicide, they found $133,000 in cash hidden in the house, which that by itself

Speaker 4 was such an attention grabber in this community. I mean,

Speaker 4 that was one of the most unusual things about the whole incident. The blood evidence revealed Rogers was beaten at two different times.

Speaker 3 The victim sustained some injuries and then had enough time to lay there. His wounds even started to heal and then he was hit again.

Speaker 4 That's bloodthirsty. To come back and he's not dead and just beat him again to make sure he's dead.

Speaker 4 That's cold.

Speaker 4 And the forensic evidence indicated the killer approached the body yet a third time.

Speaker 5 Mr. Rogers, when he was found, his arms and actually his forearms and hands were up in the air.

Speaker 4 This phenomenon is called rigor mortis, a stiffening of the body that occurs several hours after death.

Speaker 5 What this would tell investigators about the time period is that someone moved him three or four hours after he was dead.

Speaker 4 This meant the killer was inside the house for hours.

Speaker 4 When millionaire Robert Rogers was found beaten to death in his home, police began their investigation by questioning family members and relatives.

Speaker 4 And they learned that Rogers had an ongoing squabble with his only son, Donald. They were barely on speaking terms.

Speaker 4 Donald told his father he was concerned about his memory problems and wanted to take control of his father's finances. Rogers retaliated by cutting his son out of his will.

Speaker 4 Like I said, he was a tough old bird.

Speaker 4 I could never do anything quite good enough for him.

Speaker 4 Donald insisted he didn't murder his father, although he admitted the two had serious problems. We were putting a roof on the building out here

Speaker 4 and I guess I just wasn't doing it fast enough.

Speaker 4 He picked up a thing of shingles and threw them at me, and I went right over the end of the roof, flat on my back. Knocking him off the roof.

Speaker 4 When a police officer hears that there's that much animosity,

Speaker 4 and especially when they find out Donald had been cut out of the will, out of a fairly substantial estate, that's got to raise a lot of red flags for an investigator.

Speaker 4 At Robert Rogers' autopsy, the medical examiner determined the cause of death was repeated blows to the head with a blunt object.

Speaker 5 This clearly was a homicide. With the number of blows, it appeared he had been struck 25 to 30 times.

Speaker 5 I really can't speak to the state of mind of the killer, although it certainly appears that they're enraged.

Speaker 4 But no murder weapon was found at the scene. When we leave a crime scene without that murder weapon, we have our work cut out for us in order to put that suspect in the scene.

Speaker 4 The forensic evidence proved that someone turned Rogers over several hours after death, presumably to search his pockets for money. For investigators, this offered a possible clue.

Speaker 4 How would someone grab hold of him to turn him over?

Speaker 4 And

Speaker 4 we did notice that the belt had been disturbed slightly, meaning that it had been twisted a little bit. And so we kind of thought that perhaps maybe the suspect grabbed hold of the belt.

Speaker 4 The belt was removed for forensic testing. The initial examination found no fingerprints.
So they tried superglue fuming.

Speaker 4 It's just simply heating up the superglue inside of an enclosed chamber, allowing that superglue to vaporize, and it has the physical properties to want to adhere to the fingerprint residuals left behind when an item is touched.

Speaker 4 And it revealed a partial thumbprint about five inches from the buckle. The quality of that latent fingerprint was very poor.
Thinking on a scale of one to ten,

Speaker 4 this latent fingerprint was about a two to a three.

Speaker 4 This is the only belt that I've ever obtained a fingerprint off of.

Speaker 4 Investigators found their next clue in the shards of broken glass.

Speaker 3 There was a beautiful footwear impression. It was maybe

Speaker 3 half of a shoe or the whole ball area of the shoe was present.

Speaker 4 This may have happened. when the killer stepped into the house after breaking the glass.

Speaker 3 So it gave me a lot to work with with regards to looking for accidental characteristics or markings.

Speaker 4 Using various databases, analysts quickly discovered the print was from the left shoe of white Pure 10 brand tennis shoes.

Speaker 4 Also at the crime scene, investigators found a set of keys in the grass next to one of the ponds on the 10-acre property. The keys opened the doors to Rogers' home.

Speaker 4 Divers searched the ponds and a week later found a three-foot length of pipe with a water sprinkler attachment at the end.

Speaker 4 While there were no fingerprints or hair on the pipe, there was a tiny speck of blood, which was sent for DNA testing. How it got left there

Speaker 4 has always been amazing to us because it obviously had to have dried first when it was found put in the pond. Otherwise, it would would have washed off as soon as it was thrown in the pond.

Speaker 4 To determine if this was the murder weapon, investigators devised a test to see the marks this pipe would make on a human skull.

Speaker 3 At the time, there weren't a lot of different surfaces or forensically available sources for

Speaker 3 reproducing human skin. And

Speaker 3 so in this particular case, I used just a honeydew melon. It had a smooth surface and it was rounded.
It was approximately the same size as a human head.

Speaker 4 She struck the melons from different angles and with varying amounts of force.

Speaker 3 When I hit the test surface to try to create as many different patterns as I could using that particular pipe. And then I compared them to the wound patterns seen on the victim.

Speaker 4 Scientists concluded Rogers was killed with this instrument. Why was this significant? The person

Speaker 4 that had the keys may have dropped them when they threw the murder weapon into the pond.

Speaker 4 Investigators wondered whether the house keys belonged to the victim's son or someone else.

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Speaker 4 Police now suspected that the Robert Rogers crime scene was staged and that the killer actually entered the home with a set of house keys.

Speaker 4 Now we call into question the whole idea of the breaking entering. We call into question whether or not this was a crime of some outsider coming in and trying to rob Mr.

Speaker 4 Rogers, or was it someone that had access to his house, access to Mr. Rogers?

Speaker 4 Investigators asked the victim's estranged son, Donald, where he was at the time of his father's murder. He said he had an alibi and offered to take a polygraph test.

Speaker 4 The guy who gives it to me, he says, well, you passed the polygraph test. I says, he passed it.
He says, yeah, he says, you're a lousy liar.

Speaker 4 Which is,

Speaker 4 that's cool, you know. So investigators turned their attention to Sharon Zachary, who not only lived next door to Rogers, but worked as his caretaker.

Speaker 4 Sharon said she was with a friend shopping all day across town, but investigators discovered something suspicious.

Speaker 4 She made several large expenditures in the months leading up to Rogers' murder. She started spending money.

Speaker 4 From about January to around April, it's estimated about $65,000 was spent on her own personal items. She bought a new car, a boat, and took her family on a Caribbean vacation.

Speaker 4 The expenses exceeded her family's discretionary income. Sharon was a part-time car salesperson.
Her husband was a sales representative.

Speaker 4 And investigators also learned that Rogers named Sharon the sole beneficiary of his multi-million dollar estate.

Speaker 4 Armed with the search warrant, investigators confiscated Sharon's shoes for analysis.

Speaker 3 I believe we got over 20 or 30 pairs of shoes into the laboratory.

Speaker 4 One pair caught Michaud's attention, a pair of size six and a half tennis shoes. Michaud dusted the shoes with powder and applied a sticky sheet of acetate to lift the print.

Speaker 4 All shoe impressions are distinctive.

Speaker 3 When a shoe is made and it comes out of the factory, it's exactly like every other shoe made in that particular mold.

Speaker 3 And as soon as you start walking on that shoe, you get microscopic scratches and cuts and nicks in the bottom of the shoe that makes that shoe different from all others in the world.

Speaker 4 The shoe impression found on the glass at the crime scene had various nicks and scrape marks.

Speaker 4 Interestingly, Sharon Zachary's left tennis shoe was the same size, make, and model as the impression found at the crime scene. And it also had the same nicks and scrape marks.

Speaker 3 The surface was so clean, it made just a beautiful, very detailed impression.

Speaker 4 There was enough accident markings on the glass that she was able to compare it to the shoes and find a positive match to one shoe and only one shoe that made that print.

Speaker 4 Fingerprint analysts had a more difficult time comparing Sharon's prints to the one found on the victim's belt.

Speaker 4 They had to study the ridge details and figure out the direction of the print and what part of which finger to compare.

Speaker 4 After three days, they discovered the print on the victim's belt was the side of Sharon's left thumb. When confronted with the forensic evidence, Sharon denied she was the killer.

Speaker 4 She insisted she had no motive. But the victim's financial record suggested otherwise.

Speaker 4 In this case, we found a large sum of cash disappearing out of his account routinely over the time from January to April.

Speaker 4 That money went right into Sharon Zachary's account. Sharon convinced him to give her a power of attorney, and Sharon convinced him to give her a checkbook.

Speaker 4 And then when she got onto some of his checking accounts, and she just started using them as her own.

Speaker 4 Records indicated that Sharon Zachary stole up to $120,000, and there was clear evidence that Rogers discovered the embezzlement. Sharon Sachery was helping herself to Mr.
Rogers' funds, and Mr.

Speaker 4 Rogers apparently was not happy about that and had his power of attorney withdrawn to put a stop to Sharon Sacher helping herself to his money.

Speaker 4 Sharon also found out that Rogers planned to remove her from his will. I believe Sharon Sachery was in a hurry at that time to kill Mr.
Rogers before he could make that change in his will.

Speaker 4 I believe greed is definitely what drove Sharon Sachery.

Speaker 4 The DNA test results of the blood found on the metal pipe revealed the blood was Robert Rogers. More proof that it was.
the murder weapon.

Speaker 4 31-year-old Sharon Zachary was charged with the murder of Robert Rogers.

Speaker 4 Mr. Rogers, at one point in time, he even told an attorney that she was the daughter he never had.

Speaker 4 It is ironic that Robert Rogers,

Speaker 4 attempting to seek sanctuary for himself to seek protection from persons who wanted to rob and hurt him, trusted Sharon Zachary.

Speaker 4 And it's ironic that this person, in turn, turned on him and became the very thing that he was trying to guard against.

Speaker 4 I would never believe that something like this could ever happen. This is only the kind of stuff that you read about.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 4 looking back, I can see that this can happen to anybody.

Speaker 4 Sharon Zachary and her family lived next door to Robert Rogers, and the two became friends.

Speaker 4 Rogers' eyesight was failing, and Sharon not only befriended him, she also helped by writing checks so he could pay his bills.

Speaker 4 But prosecutors found evidence that Sharon was doing more than that and was actually helping herself to some of Rogers' money, tens of thousands of it.

Speaker 4 On the day of the murder, Prosecutors believe Sharon went to Rogers' house intending to kill him before he could change his will and remove her as beneficiary.

Speaker 4 Prosecutors think Sharon grabbed a piece of pipe from Roger's yard, used her keys to gain entrance, and struck him over the head repeatedly.

Speaker 4 As he lay unconscious, She spent hours searching the house for the money he had stashed away.

Speaker 4 If she did find money, she didn't find it all.

Speaker 4 At some point, she must have realized he wasn't dead, and she struck him again.

Speaker 4 Once again, she searched the house for money.

Speaker 4 Before leaving the house, Sharon turned Roger's body over to search his pockets, leaving her partial thumbprint on his leather belt.

Speaker 4 To make it look like a robbery, she threw a piece of firewood through the sliding glass door.

Speaker 4 But she stepped on a shard of glass, leaving a clear image of her shoe impression.

Speaker 4 On her way back home, Sharon tried to dispose of the pipe, but dropped her keys nearby. A mistake which led to the discovery of the murder weapon.

Speaker 4 Sharon Sackrey, after committing this crime, established an alibi to be seen in different locations at a point far away from her home to try to establish that she couldn't have committed a crime by having not been there.

Speaker 4 We always wondered if it was Sharon Zachary by herself or Sharon Zachary with others.

Speaker 4 We don't know. At the trial, Sharon Zachary insisted she was innocent.
But the forensic evidence told a different story.

Speaker 4 She was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. I'm glad they got her, but I don't want to sound like I'm out for vengeance.

Speaker 4 Although if they wanted to kill her, I'd volunteer.

Speaker 4 It was the shoe impression on a shard of glass and the partial thumbprint on the leather belt. that solved the case.

Speaker 4 In my 12 years of doing latent print work, this this case ranks right up near the top, if not the most difficult latent fingerprint that I've had to identify.

Speaker 4 So this was a very, very satisfying case for me to be involved with. Criminals

Speaker 4 always seem to make mistakes. I believe the mistakes on this case by Sharon Sachery were because she was fighting the clock.
This trial would have never happened without the forensics.

Speaker 4 We had a clear motive, money,

Speaker 4 but to show that she was there,

Speaker 4 to show that the print, the shoe print, the finger, the thumbprint were from her,

Speaker 4 we wouldn't have had a case.