Oba Chandler, the Florida man convicted of three counts of murder in the deaths of Joan Rogers and her two teenage daughters, denied any wrongdoing until his execution.
The murders of Rogers and his daughters, 17-year-old Michelle and 14-year-old Christy, began in June 1989, when they were found in Tampa Bay with their necks tied to concrete blocks with yellow polypropylene rope. It remained unresolved for years. According to the Tampa Bay Times.
But in the end, Tampa police were able to identify the suspect using one of the few clues he left behind: his handwriting.
The exhaustive search for Chandler is detailed in this week's repeat. Fox True Crime Podcast Comes with commentary from people involved in the infamous case.
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Oba Chandler, then 46, was charged with the murders of Joan, Christy and Michelle Rogers after a woman he was contracted to build an aluminum enclosure for recognized his handwriting from a police sign. (Fox 13 Tampa)
When they were found on the morning of June 4, 1989, Mr. Rogers, 36, and his two daughters all had their mouths taped shut and were shirtless. An autopsy showed he died of asphyxiation, but it was unclear whether he died of asphyxiation. She was either drowned or strangled with a rope around her neck.
Coroners estimated that the body had been submerged for 50 to 60 hours, making it impossible to determine whether she had been raped.
They remained unidentified for four days until a Days Inn housekeeper read a news article about the gruesome discovery and contacted police to say the Rogers trio had not returned to the hotel room where she was working. Ta.
Detectives would learn that Rogers and her daughters had vacationed in Florida while Joanne's husband, Hal Rogers, remained at a dairy farm in Wilshire, Ohio.
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Joan Rogers (left), 17-year-old Michelle Rogers (center), and 14-year-old Christy Rogers (right) have their mouths taped shut and tied to cinder blocks in Tampa Bay on June 4, 1989. It was found in a broken condition. (Fox 13 Tampa)
Four days later, police found Rogers' abandoned car in a boat ramp parking lot two miles from the Days Inn.
Inside was a tourist brochure and a handwritten note on a Days Inn slip of paper with directions to the boat dock where the car was found, including a reference to a blue and white boat.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, detectives released information about the watercraft, but despite a flood of tips, none of them led to any progress in the case.
Oxygen.com reports that Hal Rogers was quickly cleared of suspicion after an emotional interview. He told police that Rogers' older brother, John, sexually abused his older daughter, Michelle. Her father told police that the girl had not reported the incident for fear of retaliation.
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Police distributed the sketch after a Canadian tourist reported that she had been raped on the man's blue-and-white boat. The description matched the description given in a handwritten instruction sheet found in Rogers' abandoned vehicle, in which a man taped his mouth shut and threatened to throw him overboard. If she doesn't comply, we'll be in Tampa Bay. (Fox 13 Tampa)
At the time of the murder, John Rogers was in prison for raping another woman in Ohio. However, detectives determined that the man could not have committed or orchestrated the triple murder.
However, things ended in October 1989 when a Canadian tourist reported being raped by a man in May 1989, just two weeks before the Rogers family was murdered.
The woman told police that a man approached her on May 15 on Madeira Beach and offered to take her on a boat at sunset.
Once out in the bay, the man asked her for sex, but when she tried to refuse, he taped her mouth shut and threatened to throw her into the water, she said.
At one point, she said, the man told her he lived a two-hour boat ride from Madeira Beach and owned an aluminum siding company.
A composite sketch was created based on the Canadian woman's description and later released to the public, but no useful clues were obtained.
In May 1992, detectives posted examples of handwritten directions to boat launches on billboards and newspapers across Florida in the hopes that someone would recognize the handwriting. I recognized it.
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Police put up signs depicting the victims' faces and began publishing handwriting samples found in the Rodgers' car in 1992 on billboards and in newspapers. (Related news organizations)
Finally, a woman faxed a copy of the contract written by Oba Chandler, the man who installed the aluminum enclosure.
Not only did a handwriting expert match the new sample to the instructions, his face was a perfect match to the composite sketch drafted in 1989. Additionally, police learned that Chandler had been arrested as a juvenile and had been booked on charges of rape, robbery, and felonious assault. Kidnapping in adulthood, according to Oxygen.
When police moved to arrest Chandler, they discovered he had left town and were able to track him back to a gas station when he returned to the state.
He was charged with the rape of a Canadian tourist while detectives worked to build a murder case in June.
Chandler's phone records showed he was on the water the night the Rogers family was murdered, and other circumstantial evidence convinced the district attorney to file murder charges.
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Chandler was photographed moments before his execution in 2011 at the age of 65 and maintained his innocence until his death. In his handwritten note on the day of his execution, he wrote that the executioner was “murdering the executioner.” [sic] Today you are an innocent person. ” (Related news organizations)
Chandler admitted on stage at his 1994 murder trial that he had met the Rogers family and wrote the instructions, but maintained his innocence until his death.
“My whole life since my first arrest in 1969, I've been running from the police,” Chandler told a Fox 13 reporter when asked in a jailhouse interview why he ran from police. “When I was growing up, most of the time you didn't get arrested. If you were caught doing something, it was common for the police to beat you with a stick.”
“There is no evidence that I committed this crime,” he told reporters. “Nothing. Where is it?”
On the day of his execution in November 2011 at the age of 65, Chandler said he had no last words. Instead, he handed the correctional officer a handwritten note, according to the Tampa Tribune.
“You're killing people. [sic] Today I am an innocent person,” it read.
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On November 27, 1990, the strangled body of Ivelis Berrios Begelis, 20, was found in Coral Springs, Florida. In 2014, Coral Springs police matched her postmortem rape kit to Oba Chandler's DNA, but he was executed three years earlier. (Coral Springs Police Department)
In 2014, Chandler was involved in the unsolved murder of another woman. Coral Springs police announced in February that DNA taken from a postmortem rape kit of 20-year-old Ivelis Berrios Begelis matched Chandler's.
Ms Begelis' body was recovered several hours after her husband found her car with a slashed tire outside her workplace and called police. Vegelis had ligature marks on her wrists and ankles, and brown duct tape was placed in her hair, Fox News Digital previously reported.
Detective Brian Koenig said the family of Chandler's fourth victim had mixed emotions after the discovery, Fox News Digital reported.
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“They have mixed feelings,” Koenig said. “Obviously, they're grateful to have some kind of closure and learn more about what happened, but at the same time, just to have to revisit it again 23 years later, obviously It was tough on them.”
