The Ice Box Murders /// Part 1 /// 443 | Forensic Files

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

The Ice Box Murders /// Part 1 /// 443

Part 1 of 2 www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

June 1965 - Houston, Texas. Over the course of Father’s Day weekend someone murdered Fred and Edwina Rogers in their home. The killer dismembered the victims and stuffed them in the refrigerator. Who killed the elderly couple? What was the motive or motives for the murders? Join us in the Garage as we go back in time and review this cold case.

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Brief Summary

The episode details the ice box murders of Fred and Edwina Rogers and implicates their son Charles in the gruesome crime.

Key points

The Ice Box Murders. A gruesome discovery leads to the investigation of an elderly couple's murder.
Autopsy Reports. The examination reveals shocking details about the victims' deaths.
Discovery of the Bodies. Police uncover the horrifying truth behind the couple's disappearance.
The Bolo Alert. A bolo alert is issued for Fred Rogers, but soon reveals a darker truth.
Family Dynamics. The Rogers family dynamic was hostile, with reports of deep-seated animosity.
Charles Rogers' Background. Charles Rogers had a successful career but abruptly quit his job, raising suspicions.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Who would attack and kill an elderly couple in their own home?

Questioning the nature of the crime.

5:44WatchNov 11, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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