Touch of Evil | Forensic Files | S14 E8 | FULL EPISODE | Forensic Files

[Music] up next a serial killer was on the loose in new york city these people were
chopped up it's just a savage way to die we felt that he really pissed somebody off the media labels him the last call
killer the last call for drinks that's the last that was seen of them nearly a decade passes and police still
have no suspects until advances in forensic science finally help pinpoint the killer it's
the most bizarre case i've ever been involved with [Music] for sanitation workers collecting trash
along the new jersey turnpike in 1991 it was a day like any other until they found a plastic bag so heavy
the men decided to look inside the worker felt like it was a pumpkin or something
but it was something else it was a head a human head human skull [Music] when police arrived at the scene they
found even more bags with more body parts the body was severed into seven pieces
two legs two arms upper and lower torso and the head there were ligature marks on his wrist
which suggested he was tied up or bound at some point one bag contained latex gloves a bed
sheet shower curtain and a blood stained saw it tells law enforcement that this happened in some home or a rented place
a hotel room it could be any of those things the victim's wallet was found in one of
the bags there was clearly no attempt to hide the identity of the victim the victim was 56 year old thomas
mulcahy an executive for an information company in massachusetts who'd been in new york city on a business trip
he was married for approximately 33 years he had four children with the youngest
being i believe 18 years of age and the others were young adults mulcahy had been stabbed to death then
dismembered the body parts as well as the bags themselves were washed before they were dumped
[Music] well the washing tells us that the killer wants to remove evidence and two
that there is an an intimate aspect to it of of keeping the body close it's erotic
you're taking care of the victim thomas mulcahy's wife told police some personal information she felt
might be pertinent she said at some point in his life he started experimenting with homosexual sex
i don't know that she approved of it by tracing his credit card activity detectives learned that mulcahy's last
transaction was at an atm at 11 15 pm two nights before his body was found tom mckay draws two hundred dollars from
an atm machine at 49th and avenue of america's with our luck the camera system was down so we
had no pictures there was no evidence mulcahy had ever returned to his hotel room that night
which was only a block away but there was evidence he had stopped in a nearby bar
well k he was seen at the townhouse bar which is an upscale gay bar in manhattan
he was intoxicated this was consistent with the medical examiner's report the medical examiner determined that
thomas mulcahy's blood alcohol level was above the legal limit witnesses said that mulcahy was talking
with a white male with brown hair but no one could say for sure whether they left the bar together
using the witness's descriptions police created a composite sketch which was distributed to the media
we were unsuccessful everything we did up until that point was unsuccessful but there was one item found with mulcahy's
body that provided an important clue in one of the trash bags was the wrapper for the latex gloves
the price sticker showed they were purchased from a cvs drug store in staten island new york
but investigators still faced a daunting task there were almost half a million people living in staten island we had
nothing you know we were grasping at straws one year after finding thomas mulcahy's
dismembered body new jersey police had another case that was eerily similar this time in
manchester township new jersey the body parts were bagged in a similar fashion they're double bagged
double knotted the most striking thing at least to me was the way the bodies were dismembered into
the same seven parts prints were taken and put into this system and it turned out that this
particular individual had a minor criminal record he was identified as anthony marrero
marrero's record showed he was a gay prostitute like the mulcahy case marrero's body parts and the bags had
both been washed before they were dumped along the side of the road we had really no prints no dna anything
could tie us to a viable suspect also like mulcahy the victim had ligature marks on his
wrists and ankles there's something called a signature killer that is a killer who tends to repeat their process
with several victims the cuts that were performed on his body were described as as being disarticulated
in that you actually don't just cut right through the bone you actually pull the joints apart and cut through
cartilage as opposed to bone this disarticulation was a vital clue we know it was post-mortem the precision
of the cuts led us to believe that this was done by somebody who had some knowledge
somebody in the medical profession possibly somebody along those lines one of the bags found with marrero's
body had the words president's choice on it this shopping bag was sold at only nine
locations and one of the locations happened to be staten island the store in staten island which sold
those bags was close to the cvs drugstore that sold the latex gloves found with thomas mulcahy's body
the reasonable assumption is that the killer either lives or works in that neighborhood because that would be
within what's called their zone of familiarity their comfort zone using a process called super glue fuming
investigators were able to lift two partial fingerprints and a partial palm print from the bags
these prints were entered into the nationwide fingerprint database of known criminal offenders
the results of that entry and the search were negative there was no no match we had ran out of leads and uh
it wasn't looking too promising two months later investigators worst fears were realized
when another dismembered body was found in a garbage can 12 miles outside of new york
city i looked down in a garbage can there was a couple arms you know folded up neatly
the reaction of every person who found body parts and i quote them was holy there was no doubt this was the work of
the same killer the body was placed in similar type garbage bags double knotted double
bagged there were seven pieces also and again the body and the bags had been washed down
there was no physical evidence recovered no fingerprints no dna that was foreign
to him the victim was identified as 56 year old mike sakara he was a fixture in the five oaks bar in
greenwich village the five oaks was a piano bar and it did cater to the gay clientele
lisa hall was a bartender at the five oaks on the night mike sakara was murdered
lisa said a white male came into the bar and sat next to mike hey how you doing she had never seen the man before
yes i assumed he knew michael because why would he when there's empty seats go sit
right next to him and i made the man of scotch in water and michael said lisa this is so and so
he's a nurse at st vincent [Music] when she left the bar michael and this man were still there
michael was not the type to go home with anyone and it seemed like he knew him you know i didn't think anything of it
no one saw the two men leave the bar together the detectives asked me for a name i
said it was like john or mark a very common name but it was just a first name and i
didn't really remember a name i remembered a face so investigators created a composite
sketch based on lisa's description but even lisa knew finding him wouldn't be easy well new
york city it would seem almost impossible to try to find a suspect unless they could find
some connection somehow [Music] detectives across new york and new jersey were desperately trying to find a
serial killer who was targeting gay men the media dubbed him the last call killer
the most recent victim mike sakara was last seen in a bar with a white male whom he introduced to the bartender as a
nurse working at saint vincent's hospital in new york when police followed up with the local
hospitals they identified a male nurse at saint vincent's 38-year-old mark slayton
who not only resembled the composite drawing he also lived in staten island near the stores where the killer
purchased the latex gloves and garbage bags used in the murders unfortunately slayton's prints didn't match the prints
found on the plastic bags it's heartbreaking you're out there pounding the payments you know doing
everything you can and you don't have an answer for them so it was very frustrating
thinking that the killer may have misled his victims about where he worked detective kuhn enlisted his own children
in the investigation to distribute the composite sketch of the killer to all the local hospitals
it was a family project i had my kids sitting at the table what we wanted to do was send a mass flyer out to all the
hospitals on staten island unfortunately the flyers didn't generate any significant leads there were no
motives nobody had anybody mad at them nobody was going to profit by anybody's death there were no jealous lovers
and soon the case turned cold many many man hours hundreds if not thousands of man hours devoted to these
investigations and essentially the trails just went cold the murder stopped too leaving police to suspect the killer may
have changed his mo so our thoughts were either he's locked up he's dead or any or he's still out
there and he's getting a lot better at it then eight years later the case went in a new
direction it happened when investigators heard about a new fingerprint technique that
was being used in toronto called vacuum metal deposition or vmd the vacuum metal deposition machine
is the ultimate machine to find fingerprints on non-porous materials you can have material that was stored for 50
years investigators immediately sent a dozen bags from the last call killer case to
toronto they'd been in storage for years in the canadian lab the bags were exposed to 10 milligrams
about 20 cents worth of gold which was heated to 2000 degrees fahrenheit enough to turn it into a gas
this gold vapor creates a film over the surface being tested but it is invisible
to the naked eye then vaporized zinc is introduced into the chamber it adheres to gold
which locks any prints in place so they can be photographed the end product is a negative of the
fingerprint on the surface the non-porous material and that's what we end up seeing
the vmd process yielded 16 partial prints on the bags from the mulcahy murder and three from the
marrero case these prints were of much better quality than the original ones i was ecstatic we have latents walls on
our court the new prints were entered into the national fingerprint database of known
criminal offenders again there were no matches but detective kuhn also sent hard copies
of the prince to each state since not all states had put their prints into the nationwide database
this was our last shot and we felt that if we could reach out that maybe they'd put that little extra
effort into the submission [Music] when the fingerprints of the last call killer made it through the mail to
layton print examiner kim stevens in maine state police crime lab she was happy to help out
the state of maine hadn't yet put all of their prints onto the national fingerprint database i received the
prints in the mail with a cover letter and i read the letter and the synopsis of the case
kim stevens entered the last call killer's prince into maine's state database i thought there's no way i would get a
match i had done a lot of searches for outside agencies and the chances i thought would be very slim
but the database of known criminal offenders in maine turned up 30 possible matches
so 30 prints came up in the list for me to look at one by one side by side to see if they could be the print
for the side by side comparison stevens used the original hard copies made by the 30 criminals when they were
arrested and inked by police it's time consuming and exhausting you want to do when your eye is fresh
and you're ready to make comparisons then stevens found one that she thought matched
every time i went to the next ridge and found detail that agreed obviously it was surprised
i was jumping up being down for joy and couldn't believe it the final step is to
have the match verified by another examiner and that person agreed the prince belonged to richard rogers a
former graduate student in languages at the university of maine in 1973 rogers was charged with using a hammer
to kill his college roommate he wrapped the body in a plastic tent and left it on the side of the road
richard rogers apparently said that the other man had approached him for sex and the other man attacked him
so in self-defense he attacked back and ended up killing him mr rogers claimed self-defense and was acquitted
amazing after he was acquitted rogers got a nursing degree and eventually moved to new york
at the time of the last call murders rogers had been working as a surgical assistant at mount sinai hospital in new
york that's where police arrested him they put handcuffs on while he was in our intensive care unit that does uh shock
us to say the least he was gay didn't really seem to have any long-term relationships
in your wildest dreams you would not look at richard rogers and say this guy is a serial killer we learned that
during the times of these murders richard rodgers had been off duty lisa hall chose roger's picture from a
photo lineup as the man she saw with mike sakara at the bar on the night sakara was murdered
it was just a horrible horrible thing and i'm just so glad they got him before he could murder any other people
rogers lived in staten island just blocks from the stores where the garbage bags and latex gloves were
purchased detectives searched richard rogers apartment and they found an array of
videotapes hush sweet charlotte texas chainsaw massacre he had a bible in which there were
earmarked passages referring to beheadings and dismemberments also in roger's apartment they found a
vial of a prescription drug used as a sedative it's one that's not screened for in a
routine autopsy you can use it as a date rape drug you can use it to knock people out
prosecutors believe rogers would pick up his victims in gay bars [Music] he targeted men who were drinking
heavily thanks very much thank you enjoy i shall do it rogers may have used a date rape drug
and taken his victims back to his apartment or they may have gone willingly nice collection too
once there the evidence shows he stabbed them then dismembered the bodies he most likely moved the bodies to new
jersey at night to avoid detection but even the most careful criminals make mistakes
and rogers left evidence behind the elaborate washing of the victims and the bags
didn't remove everything as for motive rogers wouldn't talk all experts can say is that the murders
had a clear sexual motivation it's the most bizarre case i've ever been involved with
and for for all of these men there was just no dignity and death in november of 2000
rogers was tried and convicted of two of the murders the cases where they had the most
forensic evidence he was sentenced to two life terms plus 65 years in prison when you look back on
it is you never gave up you keep plugging along it never ceases to amaze me what we get
in terms of forensics whether it's fingerprints uh dna any number of things it's the most powerful tool you can have
in a courtroom as a prosecutor it was pretty horrible to sit there and look at this man that actually murdered
michael sakara and to think about all the other people that lost their lives and all their families and and friends
that lost people because of this monster was sitting there but at least he was finally
put away [Music]

In the 1990s, the media dubbed Richard Rogers the "Last Call Killer" because he targeted men in gay bars who were obviously intoxicated.

Brief Summary

The Last Call Killer, Richard Rogers, targeted gay men, leading to dismemberment murders in NYC and NJ before his capture through forensic advancements.

Key points

Discovery of Body Parts. Sanitation workers discover a plastic bag containing human remains, leading to a gruesome investigation.
The Last Call Killer. A serial killer targeting gay men in NYC leaves a trail of dismembered bodies.
Breakthrough in Forensics. Advances in forensic science finally help pinpoint the killer after years of investigation.
Arrest of Richard Rogers. The investigation leads to the arrest of Richard Rogers, a former nursing student with a dark past.
Justice Served. Richard Rogers is convicted of two murders, bringing closure to the families of the victims.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's just a savage way to die.

0:10WatchMar 13, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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