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

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oh 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 edua age 79 their bodies were decapitated and cut into numerous pieces the bodies were found after a
nephew Marvin Martin aged 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 Martin and entered they found the one and a half
story home disorderly soon after an officer opened the 5 footx 3ft electric refrigerator on all of the shelves and
in the freezer compartment were the dismembered bodies there was little food in the ice
box medical examiner Henry Eisman 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 quote 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 edua 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 boox [Music]
[Music] 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 so the autopsies Captain were formed by the chief medical examiner of Harris County
Texas this is Henry Eisman who was quoted in today's trailer and because we have two victims we have two case
numbers eda's was case number 65- 1615 and Fred's was case number 65-1 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 edua Rogers no
middle name listed on the report first off I want to address eda's age as some of you may have picked up on the Fort
Worth Star Telegram article listed Ed wia's age as 79 the medical examiner report says she was 72 and I found other
credible sources that states edua 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 AG 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 edua 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 by 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 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 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 batter or hammer or something like that correct again edua 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 finding that eda'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 bludging to death the other way they're
shot 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 attack or they are
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 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 edua would have been wearing these glasses when she
was shot M 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 innards were
removed 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 innards 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 thoron and the specimen was found to be that of
human tissue lung and fat how would they know that 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 H 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 planers 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 is like an expert and he's like you'll literally find these and if you go down
the 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 shelborn this was long segments of
trachea and intestines all heavily infested with maggots oh that's awesome um yeah fine too you said
maggots but is this another situation where they would have gone down a drain and that's why we find
find them in this ditch or and kind of flush out into the ditch or these or 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 MH I think it's simply this is where they
washed away too 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 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 with inside 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 did you hear a gunshot gunot right a silencer or manade
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 that 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 just think about the maggots yeah 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 and 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 a jar packed so full of body parts that one could not closed the door completely they immediately were aware
that both Fred and his dear wife edua 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 1 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 appeared 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 vestib 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 tried 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 wh oh 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
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 shortlived
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 [Music] [Music] Rogers this show is sponsored by better
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Lor beer or just a or a non-alcoholic drink I have every one of those things lined up in front of me right now it's
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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 edua at 79 years old and what makes this even more difficult to determine is their gravestones from my
understanding they had just one 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 birth date or the date of the death it simply says the
Rogers the funeral arrangements were paid for by eda's Brother Edwin now Wikipedia list Fred Rogers Fred
Christopher Rogers as born January 19th 1884 and Ed ior 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 edua 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 deceived
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 edua
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 MH 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 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 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 Bo 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
uh 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's 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 edua 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 MH 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 in 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 um 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 edua 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 uh 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 um look
like and you know it'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 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 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 what do you think not
that you're eating humans 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 and at times probably a con man 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 blun 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 uh able to be an enforcer on debt collection then we have Eda 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 Ed WEA for my understanding and I couldn't I don't have the uh company
name or brand name in my notes I failed to put that down but she was some type of
salesperson and I don't think that this was a oh you have to show up and work a 9 to-5 at the local department store
salesperson this appears to me as more of a out ony own door Todo type of sales where she was selling things that were
like HomeGoods as well as smaller appliances blenders and things of that nature most of this could probably be
conducted again door too or via catalog sales and she takes some type of commission from this 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 Ed WEA 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's 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 he might be the one that's financially responsible for you guys that's right that's when Corso jumps in
and says not so fast my friend not so fast well there are two versions of this 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 twist 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 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 to shack up with Mom
and Dad that's like our generation you see that a lot uh people doing so well and they got to move back in and out of
some people are moving back into to uh get rid of debt so not everybody that lives with their parents 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 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 question 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 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 well
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 uhhuh 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 pces yeah
yeah IQ level of two um but he also had this this knack for his job where he could find oil right Hugh Garder 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 and he also was a pilot right
he had his pilot license and everything yeah he was a pilot he he flew for the Navy in uh World War II and it sounds
like even after the war he maintained a pilot's LIC 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 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 in 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 edua 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 Ro 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 a note under the door and if somebody
picked it up and read it they did and same thing with edua if she wanted to tell Charles something jot it down on a
note slide it under the door and it 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 2 3rd 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 edua 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 anded WEA 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 bloodstained Keyhole saw
investigators believe 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 det 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 stage robbery the other reports was that the house was in disarray so maybe he scattered things
out about the house to make it looked 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 started making me wonder 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 homicide sides 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 three days I could 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 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 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 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
baitman yeah yeah very much like Patrick baitman what we also have that I found to be very interesting the the pistol
and it's believe that the pistol that was used to kill edua 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 Decap capitate 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 durman 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 edua
[Music] Rogers thanks for joining us here in the garage if you need more of the captain
more of of the kernel download the Stitcher app all of our episodes are free and check out our show called off
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The Ice Box Murders /// Part 1 /// 443

Part 1 of 2

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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 1965 dismemberment murders of Fred and Eda Rogers, focusing on their son Charles as the prime suspect.

Key points

The Ice Box Murders. A gruesome discovery of dismembered bodies in a refrigerator shocks investigators.
A Mysterious Crime Scene. Police find a locked home with no signs of forced entry, raising questions about the murders.
Autopsy Reports Reveal Disturbing Details. The examination of the victims uncovers brutal methods of murder and dismemberment.
Two Different Methods of Attack. The victims were killed in distinct ways, suggesting a complex crime scene.
The Discovery of Human Tissue. Fragments of human tissue found in a manhole lead to chilling implications.
Mysterious Deaths Unfold. An elderly couple is found dead, leading to shocking discoveries about their family.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

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

Reflecting on the brutality of the crime.

6:48WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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