Water Logged | Forensic Files | S14 E11 | FULL EPISODE | Forensic Files

[Music] up next three women are in florida on their first real vacation these women who were here by themselves
thought this is great we're seeing tampa bay the evidence suggests they took a boat ride
and then disappeared but there was little else to go on there are hundreds if not
thousands of miles to look over to find a piece of evidence hairs fibers any fingerprints would have been washed
away but a public billboard turns citizens into investigators i thought it was a excellent idea
brilliant [Music] on a warm june morning in tampa florida authorities discovered the bodies of
three women floating in tampa bay they knew that there was foul play because the women were tied up
and had bricks around them the victims had their mouths taped shut were naked from the waist down and had
been bound with yellow rope it was horrible it was terrible it was beyond comprehension to think anyone
could do what was done to those girls the first question facing investigators was the identity
of these three women there was no id so we weren't able to identify who these individuals were where they came from
and who they might have had contact with prior to this event although each victim was tied to a
30-pound concrete block decomposition created gases that lifted both the bodies and
concrete blocks to the surface the water temperature was hot had this occurred in much colder
temperatures much colder water one cinder block might have held them under the surface you'd have to do a lot of study
on that to figure that out the medical examiner estimated the bodies had been in the water for at
least three days to pinpoint where the victims were put in the water investigators asked the university of
south florida to analyze the currents for that time period and they felt that they were probably
thrown in out in the center of the bay somewhere wasn't off of a bridge was not off of any shoreline
after media outlets picked up the story the manager of a local hotel called police
he said a woman and her two daughters checked into his hotel three days earlier he said he hadn't seen them after that
but their belongings were still there none of the personal belongings were messed with they were
all the same as they had been for a couple of days there was no evidence that anyone had
been in the room the beds were never ruffled the towels were never wet everything was in the same place the
room was registered to joan rogers and her two daughters police contacted jones husband hal
rogers a dairy farmer in ohio the sheriff got a hold of me and we had to get dental records
to identify him dental records confirmed that the victims were 36 year old joan rogers
17 year old michelle and 14 year old christy the autopsy confirmed everyone's worst fears water was found
in the victims lungs which meant they were thrown into the ocean while they were still
alive to investigators this wasn't just murder it was an execution [Applause] the horror of that resonated through the
tampa bay area and people wanted to know what kind of animal would do something like that
i think he left their eyes uncovered because he wanted each one of them to see what was
happening to the other one i think he wanted to see the fear that was in their eyes as he was doing what
he was doing with him which is is about as perverted as you can get but who wanted to murder three tourists
and dump their bodies in tampa bay when joan rogers and her daughters drove to florida for a week of sightseeing
joan's husband hal the girl's father decided to stay behind he had a dairy farm he was running at
the time that's a 365 day a year job but even though his family didn't return home as planned hal rogers waited
three days to contact police he seemed somewhat cold to me very cold here's a person who's just lost his
entire family not just one but three people and there was no emotion hal told police
he didn't have time to be emotional he had a farm to run i just did what i needed to do to
function and didn't worry about nothing else investigators tracked house whereabouts
for the day of the murders for hal he didn't like to cook for himself so he ate his meals
at local restaurants and numerous witnesses provided his alibi the people here know
because i'd been to breakfast that morning and that evening for dinner so you know almost an
impossibility at the autopsies the medical examiner discovered the sea water had
eliminated crucial forensic evidence with the bodies being submerged in the water for the length of time that they
were any trace evidence hairs fibers any fingerprints would have been washed away essentially by the water it
was impossible to say for certain if the victims had been sexually assaulted we had nothing to go on as far as
forensic evidence to amount to anything police were on the lookout for joan rogers car
and they found it at a public boat launch it was one mile away from the rogers hotel
25 miles away from where their bodies were recovered inside the car were two handwritten
notes on one were directions to the hotel the other on hotel stationery contained
directions to the boat launch the writing samples were sent to a forensic document examiner
for analysis the handwriting that appeared on the day's end letterhead was written by joan rogers and we knew
that because we received quite a bit of her handwriting for comparison the handwriting
on the other note the one with directions to the rogers hotel was distinctive i determined
that the handwriting on the brochure was not written by the mother or either of her daughters
in the word courtney part of the hotel's address the t was capitalized in the middle of
the word this is unusual not only because it's a capital letter but because of the spatial quality of
the small r to the tall t and the letter y was written in a way that theresa stubbs
had never seen before the letter y was written four times and each time it was written differently
just a slight variation but different that was important so they're working it really hard
we got to find who wrote this note we do that we find the killer besides the handwriting the note held
one other clue next to the directions to the boat launch joan rogers had written the phrase blue
with wht we just surmised it was they were meeting something that was blue and white if you're going to a boat
ramp what might you be meeting that would be blue and white it'd be a boat but there were no boats docked at the
launch it's an area where anyone residents or even tourists can put their boats into the water
for a day of boating then police got a break a tipster told them about a local man
who was running an unlicensed business from this boat launch offering tourists sunset
cruises on the bay his name was jason wilcox and he owned a blue and white boat a background check revealed
wilcox had a criminal record and had served time for aggravated assault he lived just five miles from the boat
launch on his property where his boat was he had some concrete blocks wilcox denied any involvement in the
murders but without any physical evidence to tie him to the rogers women it would be difficult to get a court
order for his handwriting sample you can find the suspect you can even find the one you think did it
but now proving it is a whole other ball game [Music] two weeks before the murders of joan
rogers and her two daughters homicide investigators learned of a similar crime involving a 24 year old canadian tourist
and a man in a blue and white boat she's a tourist and he offers her a ride on the bay and she goes wow great
once they were out on the water where no one could see them the man said he'd kill her if she didn't
have sex with him he also told her there were sharks in the water in case she was thinking of trying to
swim to shore she says please please don't do anything to me i'm a virgin she said he got very excited about it he
rapes her and he told her before he raped her it's not worth getting murdered over a sexual assault and
he apparently had ropes on the boat just as he did with the rogers family afterwards the man got physically ill
was it a matter of he was so excited he was physiologically overcome or was it that he psychologically was so
appalled by his act that he got sick i'm not a psychologist or physiologist but certainly that's bizarre behavior
inexplicably the man waited until dark drew close to shore and allowed the young woman to swim to
safety investigators were fairly certain it was the same man who murdered the rogers family the
parallels were pretty eerie unfortunately the victim took a shower before she went to police
headquarters to report the crime so no dna was recovered but her description of the man enabled
police to create this composite sketch which was distributed to the local media the victim said jason wilcox was not the
man who assaulted her and wilcox was also eliminated as a suspect in the rogers case in the end he was
given a polygraph test and was cleared on all that and actually had some alibis to where he was at the time the
composite sketch prompted hundreds of leads all of which had to be followed up the description of a blue and white boat
also generated plenty of hits we had close to 800 men that were called in a lot of them had to do with blue and
white boats so that was a big big job to eliminate all these persons of interest that were called in
to us after those leads turned out to be dead ends investigators tried something else
they used five area billboards to display the sample of what they believed was the
killer's handwriting that was an unusual tactic and i believe they did it is because they had no place
else to go that's when joanne steffy saw the billboard on the side of the tampa highway and she
recognized the handwriting it looked like the handwriting of a contractor she knew
oba chandler when i first initially met mr chandler he came across as not telling the truth
and he wouldn't look you in the eye [Music] and he just seemed shifty joanne rushed home and found the
handwritten receipt for some work chandler had done for her as i was looking at it my knees actually
buckled i nearly fell from the sure shock of the proof now to me that this was the man
they've been looking for all this time and i knew there was no turning back at this point
that i had to get everything to the police oberchanzer's handwritten receipt was
compared to the handwritten note found in joan rogers car it was like oh my god this is it i
immediately saw the capital t repeatedly throughout his riding my heart started racing
i found all the whys and the variations that were on the brochure within minutes i knew i had found the
writer ober chandler was 43 years old and ran a construction business he was married and had eight children by
seven different women he also had a criminal record dating back to his teens that included
two sexual assaults but what was most telling was where chandler lived oba chandler's residence
was on a canal that was probably within a half mile a mile of where the boat ramp where
the victim's vehicle was found investigators tracked down ship-to-shore phone records
which are recorded for all boats making calls while on the water these records actually put oba chandler
out on the water not only on the day of the rape but also on the day of the homicide and this was
just a very very great find chandler denied any involvement in the murders but once
he was in custody police brought in one person who could possibly identify him the canadian tourist
who had been raped by a man in a blue and white boat she picked his photograph and
reacted visibly as soon as that photograph was shown and she indicated that she would really
like to see him live in a lineup to be absolutely certain look carefully this resulted in another
positive identification but just as investigators went to inspect chandler's boat
they discovered he had sold it most likely to get rid of potential evidence prosecutors knew
if they were going to get a murder conviction they'd need more evidence than just
handwriting a forensic document examiner was already convinced it was oba chandler's handwriting on the
brochure found in joan rogers car but investigators wondered if there was anything else
on the brochure that would guarantee a conviction the brochure was processed with a
chemical called anhydron a chemical that reacts with the amino acids found in fingerprint residue
prints when they come in contact with ninhydran will turn purple and can then be
photographed on the brochure were numerous fingerprints and one palm print one of the victims
was identified as being the source of some of those impressions but there were also unidentified prints
on that brochure the best unidentified print was a high quality right palm print when chandler's right
palm print was compared to the palm print on the brochure found in the victim's car there was no
doubt that not only linked our handwriting to the brochure but also a palm print and you don't get much
better than that oba chandler was charged with three counts of kidnapping and first degree murder
investigators believe chandler met joan rogers at a gas station where joan may have
asked him for directions to their hotels you're gonna have to you know if you've
got something i can break down one i can give you hey you can just write it on this okay
chandler wrote them on her map leaving behind a handwriting sample and his palm print
[Music] so you ladies here on vacation yeah we're that's when chandler may have offered to
give them a sunset cruise on his boat and offered the girls [Music] accepted yeah it sounds good why don't you take
down the instructions chandler gave joan directions to the boat launch and when she wrote them she also jotted
down a vital clue blue with w-h-t later that night chandler took them out on the water
where they were at his mercy [Music] the women couldn't swim so there was no way they could have made it to shore
safely they had no option but to comply they were bound and gagged and presumably
sexually assaulted later he tied each one of them to a concrete block and threw them
[Music] overboard chandler left an electronic trail when he called his wife on the ship to shore
radio to tell her his boat had engine trouble and that he'd be late for dinner chandler's other mistake was leaving his
handwriting and palm print behind over chandler was tried convicted and sentenced to death
over chandler you have not only forfeited your right to live among us under the laws of the
state of florida you have forfeited your right to live at all mr chandler may god have mercy
on your soul the bold decision to put the handwriting evidence on billboards for the entire city to see made the
difference in this case i thought it was an excellent idea brilliant because detectives can only work
on leads that they receive and when they've exhausted every possible lead they have
that's when it becomes necessary to try something different and let the public in the
investigators were up against dead end they didn't know what to do and they said what do we have to lose
by putting up this billboard and yeah it was a gamble but it was a gamble that certainly paid off
i think the singular uh break in the case came with the identification of the handwriting
that was his ultimate undoing you

In 1989, the dead bodies of Joan Rogers and her two teenage daughters were found floating in Tampa Bay.

Brief Summary

Three women are murdered in Tampa Bay; Oba Chandler is identified and convicted through handwriting evidence and palm prints.

Key points

The Discovery of the Bodies. Authorities found the bodies of three women in Tampa Bay, indicating foul play.
Identifying the Victims. Investigators struggled to identify the victims until dental records confirmed their identities.
Chandler's Conviction. Oba Chandler was convicted and sentenced to death for the murders.
The Killer's Handwriting. A billboard campaign featuring the killer's handwriting led to a crucial tip.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It was horrible, it was terrible, it was beyond comprehension.

Describing the crime against the victims.

1:19WatchMar 13, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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