The Devil's Dozen (26 page)

Also testifying that day was Sergeant George Kegerreis, who indicated that eighteen fingerprints and a palm print lifted from the bags containing parts of victim Peter Anderson had been matched to eight of Rogers’s fingers and his palm. With this testimony, the state rested its case.

John O’Brien, a reporter for the
Staten Island Advance,
described Rogers’s demeanor during this final stretch. In contrast to his earlier calmness, he now “wrung his hands, bounced his legs and grimaced at his attorney.”

On November 10, Rogers indicated he would not take the stand to testify on his own behalf. Ruhnke also stated he would call no witnesses on Rogers’s behalf. This surprised many people. It seemed that Ruhnke’s challenge of the fingerprint testimony had been his sole strategy. While he also asked for an acquittal based on the fact that no one knew where the men had been killed, the judge dismissed this concern.

Closing arguments from both sides were brief. Prosecutor William Heisler reiterated the circumstantial and physical evidence that linked Rogers to the crimes from all four cases.

Defense attorney Ruhnke reiterated that with no crime scene, New Jersey had no jurisdiction; he also disputed the argument that his client’s fingerprints on bags were proof that he’d committed murder. They had the wrong man.

In the middle of the afternoon of November 11, the jury retired. During their deliberations, they asked Judge Citta about jurisdiction issues. He indicated that New Jersey did have jurisdiction over the two cases, because the law allowed them to infer that if the bodies were found in the state, the men had been killed there. There was no proof that they had been murdered anywhere else.

By six o’clock that evening, they had a verdict. People filed back into the courtroom, despite the fact that it was a Friday, until the place was packed. The forewoman wept and held the hand of another woman as she rose to announce their findings. Clearly she was shaken—always a bad sign for the defense. And it was. Richard Rogers, fifty-five, was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Thomas Mulcahy and Anthony Marrero. He was also found guilty on two counts of hindering his apprehension by dismembering the victims and disposing of them the way he had. As the forewoman spoke, Rogers showed no reaction. He simply stared at the front of the courtroom.

Since the D.A. had not requested the death penalty, Rogers was remanded to Ocean County’s jail to await his January 26, 2006, sentencing, which everyone knew would be life imprisonment. Ruhnke announced his plan to file an appeal over the jurisdiction issues. Heisler told reporters that he felt better knowing that the killer was no longer out on the streets. It was a victory for him and his team, as well as for the tristate task force that had worked so hard on making sure that a killer had been brought to justice.

“When you put everything in the mix,” Heisler said in retrospect, “it’s pretty tough to explain all these fingerprints and all these bodies dismembered in the same way, and try to lay it off on anyone else. I’d like to have had more information about what motivated the guy.”

Judge Citta had no qualms about putting a label on these acts. At the sentencing, he said to Rogers, “You are an evil human being.” He added that he would do everything in his power “to assure society that you never walk free again and that you die in some hole in some prison.” He gave Rogers two consecutive life terms, plus ten years, ensuring that he must serve sixty-five years behind bars before he could be considered for parole. “If we had to measure a depraved murderer on a scale of one to ten,” Judge Citta said, “I would have to conclude that Mr. Rogers’ participation and actions in these murders would make him a ten.”

Whether Rogers will be tried for the other murders remains to be seen. However, relevant technology will continue to be at the forefront of such investigations. The use of science is compelling to juries, who are swayed by its seemingly objective irrefutability. The next case in this chronicle, also a long-term investigation, involved computer technology.

 

 

 

Bean, Matt. “Gold-Dust Fingerprint Method Catching On.”
CourtTV.com
, November 14, 2004.

“ ‘Body Chop’ Nurse Charged in Grisly Dismemberment Slayings.”
New York Post,
January 22, 2003.

Cave, Damien. “As Killer Faces Sentencing, His Motive Remains Elusive.”
New York Times,
January 27, 2006.

Cummings, Amanda. “Vacuum Metal Deposition: The Future of the Last Call Killer Saga.”
Associatedcontent.com
, retrieved December 9, 2007.

Dimeo, Lisa. “Vacuum Metal Deposition: Its Value in Developing Archival Prints,”
SCAFO.org
, October 3, 2002.

“Fingerprint Identification using Vacuum Metal Deposition,”
rcmp.ca/firs/bulletins/vacuummetal

Fisher, Ian. “Do Threads of Five Lives Lead to One Serial Killer?”
New York Times,
August 8, 1993.

Holl, John. “Man Who Killed 2 He Met at Gay Bar Gets 2 Consecutive Life Sentences.”
New York Times,
January 28, 2006.

Hopkins, Kathleen. “Chilling Warning Made by Suspect.”
Asbury Park Press,
September 29, 2005.

_. “Ex-Bartender Says Rogers Was Last to See Her Friend.”
Asbury Park Press,
November 3, 2005.

_. “Murder Trial to Start Sept. 20.”
Asbury Park Press,
August 20, 2005.

_. “Prints Match, Detectives Testify.”
Asbury Park Press,
September 23, 2005.

_. “Killer Gets Two Life Terms.”
Asbury Park Press,
January 28, 2006.

_. “Ex-Nurse Guilty of Murder May Face More Charges.”
Asbury Park Press,
November 24, 2005.

_. “New York Killing Identical to 2 in New Jersey, Detective Tells Judge.”
Asbury Park Press,
September 22, 2005.

_. “Experts Connect Fingerprints to Killing Suspect.”
Asbury Park Press,
November 2, 2005.

“Judge Rules Gay Prey Serial Killer Richard Rogers Jury Will Hear Similar Slayings.”
Queerday.com
, retrieved September 29, 2005.

Osborn, Duncan, “An Accused Serial Killer on Trial.”
Gay City News 3,
January 29-February 4, 2004.

Parry, Wayne. “Trial of Richard Rogers to Hear About Slayings, Dismemberment of Four Gay, Bisexual Men.” Associated Press, October 15, 2005.

Rizzo, Nina, and Joseph Sapia. “Suspect Resisting Extradition, Home Searched for Evidence.”
Asbury Park Press,
May 31, 2001.

A man crept into Joseph Otero’s home in Wichita, Kansas. It was January 1974, the middle of winter. He took few pains to hide, yet no one saw him well enough to identify him later. Glancing around, he entered the backyard and cut the phone wire.

Joe and Julie Otero were in the kitchen, having taken three of their five children to school. Josie, eleven, and Joey, nine, were getting ready for the next run. The family had lived in this home for less than three months and had no idea that a man who had spotted Julie and Josie a month before had been stalking them. He had documented the family schedules and the number of children, calculating when he could move past his usual voyeurism and act out his fantasy of assault and murder. In the past, he had targeted others, but he’d always stopped short. He was seething for a chance to bind a woman, torture her, and then kill her.

Finally, the morning had arrived and he came equipped with rope, cord, tape, gags, and plastic bags. He also carried a .22 pistol and a knife. After severing the phone line, he spotted Joey outside and forced him back in. Ignoring the barking dog, purchased for protection, he prepared to tie up the boy and his sister and mother.

The press called him BTK—bind, torture, kill. “Mild-mannered” Dennis Rader stands trial.
AP/Worldwide Photos/Bo Rader, Pool

However, the intruder had miscalculated. Joe, usually gone by this time, was still at home, disabled by a recent car accident. The intruder drew his gun to show he meant business, quickly inventing a story that he was there to rob them. Joe thought it was a joke, but when he was forced to the floor, he realized it was not. The man tied the three family members up with rope, cord, and tape, Joe in the kitchen, Julie on her bed, and Joey in his room. He pulled two T-shirts and a plastic bag over the boy’s head, wrapping a cord around his neck and letting him slowly suffocate. But the intruder had saved his full lust and rage for the little girl, Josie.

After the other three were dead, he put a rope around Josie’s throat and a gag in her mouth, and then took her into the basement. He tied her feet together and her hands behind her back, lifting her up to hang her from a sewer pipe. As she struggled to free herself, he cut through her bra, pulled off her panties, and masturbated, finally ejaculating on her leg. She died by strangulation and he left her hanging.

Before he left the house and drove off in the family’s Vista Cruiser, it seems likely that the killer thought about the other three Otero children, who would be coming home from school later that day only to find their murdered parents and siblings, and that this image added one more fiendish layer to his sadistic pleasure. He had finally carried out a fantasy he had devised with care and it made him feel powerful. This would hit the city papers and make him famous, albeit anonymously. That, too, gratified him. But then he realized he’d left the knife behind, so he went back for it, entering the home as if he belonged there. When he had the knife in his possession, he went to the woods to burn some notes and sketches he’d made, along with remnants of cord and rope. He finished in time to greet his wife as she came home from work. He also recorded what he’d done that day in a journal, naming himself “BTK”—for
bind, torture, kill
.

When the three surviving Otero children discovered their murdered family, they were horrified, and alerted neighbors and the police. Even the homicide detectives were stunned, especially when they found Josie. They set out asking around to try to solve the crime quickly, but conflicting witness reports made leads difficult to develop. They had a tall man, a short man; a white man, a dark-complected man. No one had seen his face. The abandoned car was found and processed, but that led nowhere. It made no sense that a stranger would just enter a home at random and kill a family, so they theorized a drug connection. However, that conjecture, too, had no support.

The detectives did learn that the killer liked knots; he had used a number of different ones to tie up his victims, as if he were having fun. They thought he might have a naval background. He also liked to hurt people. Julie’s face showed bruises and she had several ligature marks, as if she had been choked more than once.

The
Wichita Eagle
and the
Beacon
both devoted priority space to the story, but no one was caught and leads dried up. The coverage stopped as well. Members of the homicide squad, having seen the family, were angry. They wanted this guy caught and punished. But they would be waiting for this for a long time.

BTK, otherwise known as Dennis Rader, was a churchgoing man with a job and family, who forbade people around him from telling offensive jokes in front of women. He was ordinary, polite, controlling, and sometimes nasty, but he was no one’s idea of a serial killer. The cops didn’t yet know they even
had
a serial killer on their hands. In the early 1970s, little was known about serial murder. Ted Bundy was not caught until 1978, and the Son of Sam would not terrorize New York for another two years. The decade before, Albert DeSalvo had been nailed as the Boston Strangler, while the Zodiac had terrorized San Francisco and Juan Corona had murdered twenty-five migrant workers in California, but such things were unheard of in Kansas. Even the FBI had barely begun to think about its Behavioral Sciences Unit, with its profilers. They would enter this case later, but for the time being, there was little that any investigator could do.