Episode 688: The Last Call Killer (Part 2)

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Hey, weirdos. I'm Alayna.
I'm Ash. and boy is it morbid yeah this is a very morbid case yeah it's like deeply upsetting yeah but i think a case that everybody should hear because, wow.
Because, oh boy. Yeah.
Lots, lots to dive into here. Lots happening.
I guess since it's part two, do you want to just get right into it? Yeah, I think we should. I think we bantered a lot in part one.
So yeah. All right.
So in part one, speaking of, we went over very, very brutal discoveries of four men who had been dismembered and dumped in garbage bags at various locations between Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. The victims, Peter Anderson, Thomas Mulcahy, Anthony Marrero, and Michael Sakura, were all gay men who had last been seen in or near piano bars in New York City.
And while investigators knew it was pretty likely that all of these men had been killed by the same person, they 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 months of investigating.
But investigators now with another fourth body that was very clearly linked to the other three needed to get to work. They're like, all right, we got to start connecting these.
Yeah, like we really got to get to it. Got to get on it.
So while they did that, reporters across the tri-state area started putting the pieces together of their own investigation. To anybody who was working a crime beat in the New York area, the details of the Michael Salkera murder sounded very familiar, and it occurred to more than a few journalists that there was probably a serial killer in the region targeting gay men.
Within a few days, investigators responded to questions about that possibility, but it was clear that they were keeping things close to the chest at this point. All they would say was that they were looking for quote-unquote possible links between the cases, to which I would have said, I think there's about 45.
Babes, I think we found some. Yeah.
But in the absence of information from investigators, local LGBTQ plus activist groups stepped up to offer assistance and to educate the public about the serious problem of violence that was, you know, queer people were facing every single day. Yeah.
Matt Foreman told a reporter for Newsday, it's a shame that we have to wait until there's a bona fide string of these incidents before we can get any attention. Yeah.
As the executive director for the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, Matt Foreman was pretty well acquainted with the problem of anti-gay violence across the country, and he himself even offered to help the police with questioning members of the gay community who were typically a bit hesitant to speak with law enforcement because of their past. Yeah.
But within a week of the discovery of Michael Sakura's body, investigators were more forthcoming with information, but they still remained cautious. Rockland County District Attorney Kenneth Gribbitt said, we're not trying to cause panic, but we don't want to be living in a dream world.
He did, though, confirm the similarities between the cases. He said they were undeniable and enough for the public to be concerned about.
Okay. For him, one of the most compelling details was that all the bodies were left in locations where they were almost sure to have been found quickly.
Even though they were concealed. That's what's interesting.
He said, if you dump something in a wooded area, there's a good chance it will be discovered. But when you throw something in a trash can, there's a great possibility it will be.
They all agreed, investigators,

that it felt like the killer was challenging them to find him.

Within days, the press dubbed the killer

the, quote, last call killer,

which was a reference to the fact that

almost all of the victims had last been seen

in gay bars around closing time.

The name gave the press and local activist groups

something to latch onto and refer to

as the threat of this killer continued to completely terrify the gay community. Yeah, understandably.
Yeah. In response, groups like the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project spread out across the city, handing out flyers with tips on how to stay safe without, you know, sacrificing a social life.
Yeah. A lot of groups also banded together and offered a $30,000 reward for information leading to an arrest, but unfortunately none of those leads ended up being productive.
Damn. But I do love seeing the community come together and really try to make a difference.
While community activists hit the street to protect their own, law enforcement officials from New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania got together and formed their own task force to address this interstate killer. Using a description of the man seen with Michael Sakura at the Five Oaks, a sketch of the suspect was finally made now and circulated to all law enforcement officers in all three states.
In New York, detective visited St. Vincent's Hospital, working the most viable lead that they had, because remember someone had seen michael at the bar and he had introduced him to whoever he was sitting with and said he's a nurse at st vincent's yep unfortunately after the sketch was passed around to every staff member at the hospital and even after key staff members were interviewed none of them remembered seeing anybody who even slightly resembled the sketch damn it seemed that if the killer was a nurse, he definitely didn't work at St.
Vincent's. So for months, the 18 officer task force just poured over the details and the evidence in the case, hoping that there might be some detail they missed that they would find and that would break the case.
By that time, the consensus was that they were looking for one man in all four homicides.

But at the same time,

this killer didn't seem to have a lot in common

with the serial killers they were familiar with,

like Ted Bundy or the Hillside Stranglers.

Those killers went out of their way

to display their victims.

New York police detective Reapier said,

there are some killers who kill once

and could be sufficient for the rest of their lives.

There are others who have a fantasy and who attack again and again to refuel that fantasy. As far as Pierce and the other task force members could tell, the man they were hunting definitely fell into that latter category, but as it would turn out, things were not so black and white.
After a few months of pursuing leads, sending undercover officers into bars late at night, and interviewing hundreds and hundreds of potential witnesses, the last call killer task force eventually hit a dead end. Leads and tips from the public started to dry up, and by the end of 1993, the task force disbanded.
And strangely, after the murder of Michael Sakura, the murders simply and inexplicably stopped, it seemed. now cold michael sakura's case was shelved along with Anderson, Mulcahy, and the Marrero cases, as investigators just moved on to more immediate cases.
Detective Jack Repsha said, it was always with the codicil that should something come up, we'll be here tomorrow. But it would be nearly a decade before anyone on the NYPD thought about the last call killer again.
But by then, forensic investigation had changed substantially. Although the investigations into all cases had been switched to inactive, they all remained open and were all assigned to detectives in their respective cities and counties who were keeping them in the back of their minds as these years passed, hoping to get a break.
Yeah. And that break finally came in the spring of 1999, when investigators in New Jersey learned about an advance in forensic science that would allow for the collection of once-undetectable fingerprints through a process known as vacuum metal deposition, VMD.
In VMD, the technician dusts the surface with metallic powder, and then follows that a layer of zinc dust and then places the item in a vacuum chamber. The vacuum process causes the two metals to adhere to any fingerprints left on the surface, no matter how faint they are.
Oh, that's cool. And that leaves a clear, distinct print that can then be used as evidence.
That is so fucking cool. Isn't that really cool?

That's really cool.

So detectives investigating the murder of Anthony Marrero knew that they had a large amount of physical evidence,

but when it was tested so many years earlier,

those tests hadn't come up with any viable prints,

but that didn't mean they weren't there.

Yeah.

By 1999, they hoped that maybe by using VMD,

they could get a clear set of prints

and then circulate those to

other states for analysis. Yeah.
And with over five years having gone by, they hoped their suspect

might have possibly been picked up on some other criminal charge, which would have required his

fingerprints to be entered into some kind of state or federal database. Yeah.
In a statement to the

press, Detective Matthew Kuhn told reporters, sure, it's a cold case, but we have a lot of new angles to play. We could get lucky and we owe it to the victims' families to try.
Hell yeah. Which again, good detective work here.
And I love the fact that they still stayed on top of this after so many years. Yeah, truly.
Now, the problem detectives ran into was that at that point in New Jersey, none of their state or local technicians were experienced in the VMD process. Yeah.
But they were still determined. It took a few more months, but in late 1999, investigators in Jersey found a team of crime scene technicians in Toronto, Canada, who had been using the VMD process for years.
And the trash bags from the Marrero murder were hand-delivered to those technicians to ensure a proper chain of custody. Good.
Which is, we've all seen that breakdown before. It's so nice to see it go the right way.
Yeah that they're actually taking the precautions to make sure that they don't fuck up in some irreversible way. And it seems like even extra precautions you know.
So when the bags were returned to New Jersey the technicians in Toronto had managed to lift more than two dozen previously unseen fingerprints off the bags, as well as several clear palm prints. So the new prints were circulated to the surrounding states, but to investigators' disappointment, they failed to match anything in local databases.
In the months that followed, Detective Kuhn continued submitting the prints to law enforcement agencies around the country. And finally, in 2001, he got a hit from the AFIS database in Maine.
The prints matched those collected from a suspect in a 1973 murder of a University of Maine student. So whoever this was had been a suspect in a murder previously.
Holy shit. According to the evidence, the man that Detective Kuhn and countless others had been hunting for a decade was Richard Rogers, a nurse who worked at Manhattan's Mount Sinai Hospital and lived on Staten Island.
Oh, shit. Just like they thought.
They just had the wrong hospital. At first glance, nothing about Richard Rogers suggested that he could have been a serial killer.

He was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts in June of 1950.

Bullshit.

And he was the first of five children born into a working class family.

According to a cousin, he was, quote, normal, normal as could be.

That's horrifying.

Yeah.

Actually. When he was still very young, his family moved to Florida, where his father found better paying work than his previous job as a lobster fisherman.
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His dad took him fishing, taught him how to hunt, and, you know, just wanted him to develop a healthy appreciation for the outdoors. They had a nice relationship.
Things at home were cool, but things at school were not quite as ideal. As a straight-A student who was very neat, very tidy, and gangly and awkward, he was usually the target of bullies.
And they would pick on him for things like his high-pitched voice and his perceived girly nature. Stop picking on people.
Yeah, cut it out. Like, stop.
There's probably something annoying about you, too, so just move on. That's the thing.
People pick on people and I'm like, yeah, you're not fucking perfect either. No one is.
No. Like, look in the goddamn mirror.
Seriously. And it's always the people who are the most, it sounds so cliche, but they're always the most miserable and the most insecure.
Yeah. Anybody being mean to you anywhere in your life, they're so fucking unhappy and take that and feel good about it.
Yeah. They want to burn you down to their level.
So don't let them take you there. No, don't let them take your piece.
No, you're great. So Rogers didn't have a lot of friends.
And according to Elon Green, he was, quote, teased mercilessly about everything from his voice to the way that he walked. Instead of the more typical after school activities for boys at the time, like Boy Scouts and things like that, Richard's mother also took him to Girl Scout meetings with his sisters, even though his father was like, hey, can we not do that? at a certain point, his father just gave up and, you know, wasn't really teaching him

quote unquote masculine. with his sisters, even though his father was like, hey, can we not do that? At a certain point, his father just gave up and, you know, wasn't really teaching him quote-unquote masculine activities anymore.
And he switched his attention to his oldest daughter, who seemed to have an interest in hunting, and really just left Richard on his own. I know.
It's just like, come on. Richard's life didn't improve much as he entered his teen years.
In fact, it probably got worse. His supposedly feminine behaviors only became more pronounced.
And although he was not openly gay at the time, he was tormented by his peers as though he was. By his mid-teens, the torment and the ridicule from his classmates became way too much to bear.
And one afternoon, he stabbed his neighbor with a kitchen knife. Wow.
Escalated quickly. Ah, holy shit.
It's unclear what led to the stabbing of the young woman. And details are pretty much non-existent, but the incident did get him placed in a psychiatric hospital for a period of time.
Wow, as they should. Uh-huh.
Despite that, though, he still managed to graduate from high school on time.

And in 1968, he enrolled at Florida Southern,

which was a small Methodist college

just outside of Tampa.

His time at Florida Southern was pretty unremarkable.

He graduated in 1972 with a BA in French.

His peers and roommates,

at least those who remembered him,

said he was a quiet but polite young man. He really didn't make much of an impression.
His sophomore year roommate, Donald Coverley, said that he was, quote, extremely introverted, very intelligent, but he would not talk unless you talked to him first. Understandably, he continued to hide his sexuality while at Florida Southern because it definitely would have made him the target of the type of bullying that he went through in his younger years.
Yeah. Or possibly worse.
Yeah, I would say so. Because don't forget, in the 1960s, homosexuality was considered a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Association.
Yeah. And homosexual activity was criminalized at this time.
Cool. Yeah, so you couldn't be out.
Wow.

Mm-hmm.

When he was younger,

all he really would have to worry about

was being ruthlessly bullied for being gay.

But as an adult,

he could have been placed in jail

or placed in harm's way.

Actually, during his time as an undergraduate,

there was one student on the campus

who was openly gay.

And according to Elon Green,

that student was, quote,

reportedly moved into an off-campus apartment by the administration for his own safety. Holy shit.
Yeah. I would say, are we okay? But the answer is a resounding no.
No, because it's crazy that history is, like, somewhat repeating itself. Yeah.
Again, I say a resounding no. History is repeating itself.
On the afternoon of April 30th, though, 1973, two bicyclists riding along a back road discovered the body of a young man laying at the edge of the woods about 10 feet from the road. This boy was shirtless, covered in blood, and wrapped in a large sheet of green canvas, like you might use for a tent.
Green. I was just, you couldn't see me, but I gave Ash a look that was like, huh? Yeah, green canvas.
Not green trash bags, but green canvas. Green canvas, still a strange coincidence.
Police found tire marks on the road near 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 the key was identified as belonging to 22 year old graduate student Frederick Spencer.
According to the medical examiner, Spencer had been killed by at least eight blows to the back of his head with a hammer. Holy shit.
Any of which the medical examiner said would have been fatal. Yeah.
The murder came as a shock to the small community of Orono, Maine, where students and faculty of the university accounted for a significant portion of the only 9,000 or so residents. As far as anybody there knew, Fred Spencer was well-liked.
He was a hardworking young man. He got along with pretty much everybody.
He was a student at the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, and he'd been actually recruited to the school, according to one advisor,

based on his outstanding academic record

and future promise as a research scientist.

Wow.

So this kid had a bright future ahead of him.

While the body was being moved

to the nearest mortuary for autopsy,

investigators went to the house that Fred shared

with a couple of roommates and other grad students.

And after being invited inside

by one of Spencer's roommates and taking a quick look around, it was pretty obvious that they had found the scene of the murder. There were dark brown and red stains on the carpet on the stairs, and it looked like somebody had tried to clean them.
With the roommate's permission, they continued to look around the house. Upstairs in the hallway, they found a spongy material on the floor, which they had also discovered wrapped in the canvas with spencer's body the material was scattered lightly on the floor in a trail that led to the bedroom of richard rogers oh yeah in roger's bedroom they also discovered blood droplets on the walls floor and ceiling they also found bloody fingerprints on the wall beside the door and in the bathroom on the floor.
And it was in Roger's bedroom that they found their murder weapon, a standard claw hammer. And you're telling me he was just a suspect in this? You'll see.
Okay. The evidence all pointed to Roger's and he was picked up by police later that day.
Now there's some conflict surrounding the nature of Richard and Fred's relationship. Most of Roger's classmates recalled that they were roommates and had a strained relationship.
There was, like, always a kind of tension between them. But then other people said that they were very close and spent a lot of time together.
So I don't know if maybe both of those things are true. I was going to say.
And they had some kind of falling out. Yeah.
And maybe they were close, spent a lot of time together, but there was always like an underlying thing. Yeah.
You know? But either way, investigators couldn't seem to identify any kind of motive for this killing. As far as they knew, neither Richard or Fred had a history of violence and there was nothing in either of their past that would suggest something like this was possible.
I don't think they knew about the psychiatric scent. I was like, I was like, I like i'm sorry are we are we pretending that he didn't stab someone i think they had not come across that it seems okay they should they should look into that they for sure before saying that they don't see a history of violence yeah because because that's a violent history there's one yeah i see it oh found it i got.
Found it. It's like, where's Waldo, but history of violence.

I'm so glad you saw my face being like, uh.

I was like, wait, wait, wait.

I was like, excuse me?

Yeah.

So at the state police barracks, Richard was brought into an interview room, and it didn't take long for him to fully confess to this murder.

Okay.

He claimed that the two had been in his bedroom when an argument broke out, and he said Fred came at him with the hammer.

He claimed he wrestled the hammer away from Fred and, self-defense hit him on the head several times. After being hit with the hammer, Spencer was still struggling, Richard said, so he put a plastic bag over his head to, quote, knock him out.
He said it was simply a matter of self-defense and what he thought was a fight for his life. uh investigating officers were pretty fucking skeptical of this because self-defense doesn't often include asphyxiation yeah and aren't all the hammer hits to the back of the head that's also a little it's also a little telling little sus i would say they had found their killer so now it was up to a judge and jury to determine whether or not he was telling the truth.
Why the fuck is this guy out and doing it again? Because society's fucking gross. That's why.
This is horrifying. Yeah, it gets worse.
Oh. Richard's attorney, Errol Payne, had hoped to avoid a trial at all, and even the judge actually tried to arrange for a plea agreement with the prosecutor, Fawad Salim, but Richard refused to accept a plea deal and seemed eager to prove himself in court oh boy the trial started on october 29th 1973 in banger superior superior court over the course of several days salim called several character witnesses to testify as to fred's easygoing nature and strong moral character he also had the medical examiner go into great detail about the extent of Spencer's injuries.
The prosecutor acknowledged, sure, it was possible that Roger was telling the truth about the initial self-defense claim, but if it was purely a matter of self-defense, why had Richard put a bag over the victim's head after he'd been subdued? Yeah. And also, why had he gone to such great lengths to get rid of the body, clean the crime scene, and all of that, rather than report the attack to police right away? Exactly.
The prosecution made a compelling argument for murder and expected an equally strong response and defense from Payne. But when the time came for the defense to present their case, Payne didn't have any follow-up questions for any of the prosecution's witnesses, and he really didn't even call many of his own witnesses.
Actually, just a few days into the trial, he made a motion to reduce the charges from murder to manslaughter, arguing that the state's evidence didn't support a murder charge. And the judge agreed.
What? He said it was clear Rogers had been provoked andoked and that quote the jury could not find that the actions of the defendant exceeded the crime of manslaughter i'll have an explanation for you shortly i will you i will like what the fuck it's homophobia oh because i'm like what we. What? We will get there.
This man hit another man on the head, back of the head, eight times, all of which, any of which, according to the medical examiner, could have been fatal. It was the fatal blow.
And then asphyxiated him with a bag and dumped his body in a wooded area. Yeah.

And tried to clean up.

And tried to clean everything up.

And we're claiming that is not sufficient enough evidence.

They're literally being like, well, he provoked him.

No, girl, it's manslaughter.

Whoa.

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So at the opening of the trial, Salim was confident that he could get a conviction based on the evidence alone, which Elena just laid out for us again. But within less than a week, that confidence was undermined when things got even less certain because Rogers took the stand to testify on his own behalf.
Despite the very serious charges, he was remarkably calm, collected, and even persuasive. His lawyer argued that the bludgeoning of Fred Spencer had been committed, quote, in passion under sudden provocation.
And any reasonable man would have reacted the same way. Oh, my.
Any reasonable man would have climbed on top of him, hit him in the back of the head 18 times, and then strangled him with a plastic bag over his head. Wow.
It's just reasonable. Yeah, that's just man things, you know? Yeah, facts.
Richard confirmed this and 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 suspicious.
Oh, yeah. So instead, he wrapped the body in a tent and dumped it in the woods.
Yeah, which, like, yeah, you're right. That doesn't look suspicious.
Not at all, no. Yeah.
On November 2nd, 1973, the jury deliberated for just under three hours before emerging to acquit Richard Rogers of the charges that were put against him. Shame.
Shame. Shame.
After the verdict. On all of you.
Yeah. Shame.
After the verdict was read, he told a reporter, I just had no idea how this was going to turn out. I mean, I'm not guilty, but I am really thankful.
And as the jury filed out of the courthouse he yelled after them saying thank you very much i assure you you did the right thing wow yeah i'm simply without a thought you're not alone because under the circumstances and given not only the evidence but his own fucking confession to murder his acquittal came as a surprise to pretty much everyone close to this case. Wow.
Wow. Wow.
Society is gross. And it's, when you really like dive into that, gay panic is insane.
One man making a, which I'm not saying happened here, I'm just saying like the 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 head eight times with a hammer and then asphyxiate him and dump his body in the woods.
Do you know how many times? But then men who hit on women and Like totally like sexually assaulting them, making them feel uncomfortable, making them feel in danger. If you were to touch that guy, you'd have like an assault charge.
Yep. It happens to women all the time.
So it's totally fine in that sense. But if you're implying that I'm gay, like that logic doesn't register.

It's like, how does that make sense to anyone?

It doesn't make any sense.

Yeah, it can't.

It can't make sense.

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.

Mm-hmm.

Whatever the case may have been, he was a free man.

And after completing his graduate studies at the University of Maine, I was like, you stayed?

Everyone just like hung out with you after that?

What the fuck?

But after that, he moved to New York and he started taking nursing courses at Pace University,

which is also just another fucking dichotomy in and of itself.

And then he's just becoming a nurse.

He's a nurse.

What?

He completed his program in 1979 and that's when he took the job at Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was employed until his arrest in the early 2000s, which is crazy. Discovering that Rogers had at least one murder in his past put their suspect in a new light.
The fingerprints confirmed that if nothing else, he had been involved in the dismemberment and the disposal of at least Anthony Marrero. Yeah.
But when they compared the prints from Toronto to the prints in every other case, they were a match. Oh, shit.
Yep. Now, the more investigators dug into Richard's past, the more confident they were that he was 100%, even without the fingerprint evidence, definitely the last call killer.
Yeah. When they spoke to one of his ex-boyfriends, a British man who he had dated briefly in 1996 investigators learned of an incident where the two were out to dinner one night and richard suddenly turned to the man and said you should really be careful who you who you're with because the police are out there looking for a serial killer oh at the time the ex thought it was just a joke and a joke and poor taste at that yeah but in retrospect he said the comment took on an entirely different and very macabre yeah he said toward the end i realized something wasn't quite right damn it would have been unusual for rogers or really any serial killer for that matter to commit one murder and then stop for two decades only to just start again but when they learned more about who he was and his, the more investigators questioned whether he actually had stopped committing acts of violence.
On a trip to Florida to visit family in 1982, a man named Matthew Piero disappeared from a Daytona Beach gay bar after last call, and his body was found a few days later along Interstate 4. He'd been suffocated and stabbed six times in the chest and back.
A few days after that, Richard returned to New York after having visited family in Florida in that time frame. Holy shit.
Then in 1986, the remains of a man named Jack Andrews were discovered in multiple garbage bags at a rest stop in Litchfield, Connecticut, just a few hours outside of New York City. He was 100% suspected in both of those deaths, but unfortunately there was never enough evidence to officially connect him to those murders.
Wow. But there were other crimes they could connect him to, like the 1988 assault on a man named Sandy Harrow.
According to Harrow, he had met Richard in early July at the GH Club, which is a gay bar in Manhattan. Sandy noticed Richard standing against the wall of the bar and looking for a place to sit, so Sandy made some room for him and they got to chatting.
Around 8 p.m., Richard suggested they go back to his apartment, and Harrow said he seemed nice enough, so he agreed. back at roger's apartment richard immediately disappeared into the kitchen and returned with

a drink for sandy which sandy remembered being orange juice or something like that he said i was drinking the orange juice i didn't taste anything strange but i remember passing out and as i fell forward there was a very dark blue rug on the floor oh it reminded me of that movie fresh yes yeah oh. He said when he woke up later, hours later, he had been stripped nude and his wrists and ankles were bound with hospital ID bracelets.
I need you guys just to sit with that for a second. Yeah, fully.
He woke up completely nude and was bound at his wrists and ankles with hospital ID bracelets. Ugh, I hate it.
He started to scream, and at that point, Rogers came over and injected him with a needle, so he lost consciousness for a second time, and then woke up again a few hours later. Rogers had him dressed and left him outside on the sidewalk a few blocks away.
What the fuck? Sandy called his friend, who picked him up and took him to the hospital. He was treated at Roosevelt Hospital, where they conducted a rape exam and found no evidence of sexual assault.
He's got, like, Jeffrey Dahmer vibes. He does.
He very much does. Sandy obviously reported the assault to the police, and Rogers was arrested and charged with kidnapping and assault.aved he waived his right to a jury trial and instead chose a bench trial where for some reason he was acquitted and allowed to go free are you fucking kidding me i'm not they just kept letting this they were like yeah please do more yeah go ahead Yeah.
Go ahead. Escalate.
Yep.

Escalate more.

Escalate more. Like, what the fuck? Yeah, just go ahead and...
Shame on all these people that let him out several times. So in just a matter of a few weeks, investigators had gone from a fingerprint match in one of the last call cases to establishing a thorough and very violent history for their suspect.
Detective Kuhn and investigators from other agencies conferred, and it was decided that the two New Jersey cases, because they had both been found in New Jersey, Thomas Mulcahy and Anthony Marrero, were the strongest in terms of physical evidence and eyewitness testimony from staff and patrons at the townhouse bar. So the prosecutor planned to charge Richard Rogers with both of those murders.
On May 28th, detectives from NYPD's major case squad started monitoring Richard Rogers and shadowing him as he traveled to and from work and just other random places. To everybody involved, this made the most sense.
He lived in New York, and even though they didn't have crime scenes there, they knew that Thomas Mulcahy and Anthony Marrero had been picked up in Manhattan. So that part of the case went to the NYPD.
And following Rogers, they hoped that he might lead them to a new location, maybe where the crimes had taken place, or that they might find additional evidence. But in the two days that they surveilled him, he kind of just traveled to and from mundane locations.
Yeah. and told him they had evidence that he had been a victim of credit card fraud.
Oh my goodness. And they just needed his assistance in catching this horrible individual.

We need you.

So he said, of course I will go with you to one police plaza.

And they sat down there in an interrogation room where they revealed that they were in fact actually investigating

the murders of Thomas Mulcahy and Anthony Marrero

and that Rogers was their prime suspect. You know what's even more stressful than a packed calendar? Realizing you're out of coffee right before a meeting.
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Don't miss it. Despite what they knew about his past, the detectives still found it hard to believe that the man who was sitting in front of them in this interview room had brutally killed and dismembered at least five people.
Because you just can't picture anyone doing that. Like, even if you know that about this man, you know that he's very capable of it, clearly.
But unlike a lot of the other violent criminals that they had been used to dealing with throughout the years, he was quiet, he was polite with them, and he seemed timid to them. He was cooperative, even, to the extent that he signed all the forms indicating he understood his rights, but he wasn't very forthcoming with useful information.
when New York detectives asked why he thought they were eager to speak with him about the homicides

he didn't show any signs of anxiety or distress and suggested it was maybe because of that 1988 assault with Sandy or maybe because of the death of Fred Spencer in 1973. Oh, the death.
I think you mean murder. Yeah.
But they showed him pictures of the victims and asked him to identify his or to verify his whereabouts when the murders were committed. And seemed somewhat compliant but told them that quote other than recognizing mr sakara i don't know if i can help you with anything else so the conversation went back and forth for a few more minutes before detectives informed him of the real reason they picked him up they said we have indisputable evidence both physical and circumstantial that links you to all four of these homicides.
We literally know for an absolute fact that you did this. Yeah, like your palm prints and fingerprints are literally all over everything.
As soon as he heard that, he sat straight up in his chair and two investigators finally appeared to become guarded. Oh.
Two detectives started walking through the details of each murder and gave their theories as to how things happened and how Rogers might be involved. And he listened, but he didn't say anything, just nodded to show that he was listening.
The interrogation went on for several hours. They went over graphic details of all the deaths, all the dismemberments, hoping that he would just give up and confess.
But by 1230 that morning, everyone was exhausted and he invoked his right to counsel. So the interview had to come to an end.

As soon as the courts opened up the next day in Ocean County, New Jersey, he was charged with the first degree murders of Thomas Mulcahy and Anthony Marrero. But he refused to waive his right to extradition, so he was transferred to Rikers Island and held on $1 million bail.
In the meantime, detectives in New York had received a warrant to search his apartment,

where they found, among other things, carpet fibers consisted of a held on $1 million bail. In the meantime, detectives in New York had received a warrant

to search his apartment

where they found,

among other things,

carpet fibers

consistent with those

discovered on Anthony Marrero's body,

heavy-duty garbage bags

like those found

at all four crime scenes,

and a bottle of Versid,

which is a benzodiazepine

commonly used

in minor surgical procedures.

Holy shit.

But also known

as a day rape drug. Damn.
Well, this just sent me. While searching through one of the drawers in his bedroom, they also found a series of Polaroid photographs that looked like they were taken from his bedroom window.
And they were photos of shirtless construction workers who were like working on the road outside his apartment. And on of the photos he had drawn on what seemed to detectives to be stab wounds on the torsos of the men in the picture what the fuck yeah yeah what a sick fucking puppy this man is but the craziest thing was the news of his arrest came as an absolute shock to his friends

and neighbors. They all flatly rejected the idea that he could ever be responsible for killing anyone.
One neighbor told a reporter from the New York Times, he's a lovely fellow who likes antiques and everything that has to do with money. And another said, Richie would never kill anyone.
god no no. Do we know anyone ever? No.
Do we ever know anyone? No. No.
No, no, no. Think about this man who you think is lovely.
Your great, awesome neighbor. Your great, awesome neighbor.
Who you talk to about antiques. Taking pictures of construction workers and drawing stab wounds on them.
And also kidnapping men. Like.
Possibly drugging them.

Even that though,

it's like something is a not,

like you don't even know that.

Yeah.

You just don't even know that about him.

Like that's.

Yeah.

Like you don't know people.

Think about the amount of conversations

that neighbor probably had with him.

Just friendly.

Hanging out.

Normal cordial conversations.

I'm so upset by that. And also like, he could have dismembered somebody next door.
Yeah. What? Absolutely.
And you had no idea. You had no idea.
Yeah. They also all described him as a kind, generous person who went out of his way to help others.
Wow. One person even said, he was really the kind of guy you could trust with your ATM card.
I'm telling you, you can't. You definitely can't.
But the fact that people felt that way before they knew what had happened. But the more news that came out in the days that followed, it became harder to insist that the police had made some kind of mistake.
It ended up taking several years just with different delays and everything before he went to trial for the murders of thomas mulcahy and anthony anthony marrero and in that time they did offer him a deal the deal was that he would plead guilty to two counts of manslaughter this guy is fucking lucky a lucky duck a lucky duck two counts of men's manslaughter and in exchange he would receive two 30-year sentences with the possibility of parole after 15 years. I'm just like confused how we're just like not being like he's he murdered people so let's charge him with murder.
I'm also like you have a shit ton of evidence. You have the evidence here.
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 that point DNA evidence was so new that they maybe thought the jury would have a hard time understanding it.

Maybe.

Or what?

Very big possibility.

But they gave him a solid deal, offered him a solid deal.

And considering the fact that he was facing at least two life sentences and that the case against him, like I just said, was pretty strong, the deal was a good one.

But it wasn't good enough for him.

He declined the offer.

What a fucking idiot. Yeah.
But remember, that's not the first time he's done that. Damn.
On October 26, 2005, which is crazy, 2005, he went on trial. I know, that's wild.
Yeah. He went on trial at the Ocean County Municipal Court in Toms River, New Jersey.
In his opening statement, prosecuting attorney William Heisler laid out the case for the jury. In the case of the Mulcahy murder, they had 16 fingerprints from nine different fingers.

And in the Marrero case, they had two fingerprints and a palm print on the bag where Marrero's head had been discovered. They also had a mountain of physical evidence, like the carpet fibers,

and testimony from various witnesses, like the bartenders at the Five Oaks and the the townhouse bar who had seen Rogers with the victims on the nights they were murdered. Unlike the last time he had been in 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 the prosecution methodically walked the jury through all the evidence against him. This time, there wasn't much the defense could do but try to inspire some amount of doubt in the jury's minds.
They argued that investigators didn't have any crime scene for any of the murders and that there wasn't any murder weapon. Oh, then it didn't happen.
Like, okay, but his fingerprints are on the bags. Yeah.
And they said, well, it's possible his fingerprints got on the bag in some other way and simply touching a 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 very least and touching two bags that have two separate dead bodies that makes you even more of a suspect yeah it makes you because like what what are the odds what a bad what you you had some bad luck you're just so you're touching multiple bags that happen to end up having multiple murder victims inside of them. Like babe, that's not reasonable doubt.
That's crazy talk. Let's go ahead and sit down everybody and let's calculate the odds of that.
Yeah. I wasn't ever great at probability, but I feel like I do good with this one.
That one I feel like we could really knock out of the park. Yeah.
Well, in the end, the defense put forth by Rogers' lawyers was unconvincing at best. Yeah.
After two weeks of very graphic, very heartbreaking testimony, the jury only deliberated for a few hours and returned to the courtroom to find Richard Rogers guilty on every single charge. Fuck that guy.
When the verdict was read aloud in the court, he did not show any emotion and did not say anything. Because he's a piece of shit.

Truly.

In late January of 2006, Richard Rogers was back in the packed Tom's River courtroom, where he stood before the judge silently as family members and friends read their victim impact statements for the court.

Tracy Mulcahy, Thomas's daughter, said,

He did it because he could and because he wanted to. He destroyed the anchor of our family and many of the dreams that we had for the future.
Which is awful. Yeah.
My heart goes out to them. Once all the victim impact statements were read, the judge sentenced Rogers to two full life terms to be served consecutively.
He told Rogers, to do less would diminish the horror of offenses you've committed, sir. Yes.
It's the purpose of this sentence to do everything within my power to assure society you never walk free again and that you die in some hole in some prison without ever having freedom again. And hopefully society will find some modicum of justice in that because there's nothing else that I can do.
What a fucking banger of a judge statement. And then he dropped his gavel.
Because 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 fuck where.
He said, I don't give a shit. I just want you to rot.
Yeah. And it's like, the only thing I want is that society never has to fucking deal with you again.
It's like that there are some people, and he is one of them, that should never see the light of day again. Absolutely not.
Like proven his entire life that he would do this forever oh and he's a brutal sadistic killer i mean that the fact that he got off in that first one you would think he would shut the fuck up and just live his life and be like wow i really yeah i really got out of that but he's a fucking animal but he kept He's deranged. Yeah.
So he was removed from the courtroom after that and transported to New Jersey State Prison to begin serving his life sentence, which I think is hilarious because he never wanted to be extradited there in the first place. And now he has to be there forever.
So I hope you're having so much fun in New Jersey. Enjoy yourself.
In 2008, he appealed his conviction to the Superior Court of New Jersey, who essentially said, fuck you. Good.
They upheld the lower court's decision. Yeah, they were like, fuck y'all.
He appealed again in 2014, but was again denied by the court. And still to this day, rots in some hole in some prison.
Amazing. And hopefully he will die there soon.
Wow. Not too soon, though.
Wow. Wanted to rot for a long time.
Holy shit. Yeah.
It's a really, really really devastating case and you just think like all these men were trying to figure out their sexuality trying to figure out their lives family and friends yeah that's the thing like some of them were married some had kids some were living comfortably and finally had yeah you know like gotten cool with who they were and he just took them away from everybody that loved them and took some of them in their darkest hours yeah which is awful holy shit he's a true monster and the fact that i didn't ever know about this guy is so upsetting it's crazy and the And the fact that like, I know we said it before, but it's just like, you can't, you can't get it together in your mind that he assaulted somebody so brutally, killed somebody years before, like 10 years before that and got away with it and possibly killed even more people. But unfortunately there just wasn't enough evidence there.
But I'm certain he most likely killed those people. Oh, I wouldn't be shocked at all.
You know? Yeah. And it's like, how many more people did he kill that just didn't connect? Wow.
Yeah, I really hope he's rotting in some prison. What a fucking brutal, brutal case.
And so sad. It was really sad.
But I'm so glad he was caught. Me too.
Holy shit. So I think we'll do something

like maybe spooky after this.

Yeah, just for a moment. 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 that you keep listening. And we hope you

keep it weird!

But not so

weird that you think you can just go

around doing whatever the fuck you want to do in ending lives.

Yeah, don't be a hateful fuck.

No.

Said it again.

Don't do it. Thank you.
I'm I'm I'm I'm If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

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