Richard Westall Rogers Jr. is one of the most horrifying serial killers because to his blatant disrespect for the human body, experience, and mind, which is something that nobody can ever dispute. After all, he lured at least two homosexual and bisexual men out of Manhattan bars and killed and mutilated them, as meticulously documented in “Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York.” We now have the crucial information for you if you simply want to discover more about him, with an emphasis on his fundamental past, his numerous offences, and his current situation.
Who is Richard Rogers?
Despite being the oldest of five children and being born on June 16, 1950, in a stable home run by a lobsterman father and a telephone worker mother, Robert reportedly did not have a peaceful childhood. That’s because his father started to feel lonely after the family moved from Massachusetts to Florida in the late 1950s in order to assist him find a better-paying job in the sheet metal production industry. The truth is that he didn’t have many friends, and because of his outstanding intelligence, feminine demeanour, and high-pitched voice, he was frequently the subject of bullying at Palmetto High School.
But it wasn’t until Richard attacked an elderly neighbour in the late 1960s—despite the fact that he was gay himself—that the darkness within him first came to light. After this episode, he was genuinely institutionalised for his general mental health in a psychiatric ward, but he was soon discharged and even permitted to return to school till he graduated in 1968. According to sources, the boy’s father methodically taught him the art of hunting animals when he was a small child, unaware that he would eventually use these same natural hunting abilities to hunt people.
However, Richard’s murdering spree allegedly didn’t start until the 1990s; however, in retrospect, it is obvious that he was involved in at least a few other severe bodily crimes prior to this time. The loner didn’t seem to have any adventures while earning his Bachelor’s in French from Florida Southern College, but that all changed the year he started working on his Master’s at the University of Maine. On April 28, 1973, the 23-year-old hit Frederic Spencer, one of his roommates, eight times with a hammer over the back of his head before covering him with a plastic bag until he passed away.
There were reportedly no strong disagreements between Richard and 22-year-old Frederic before to the fateful afternoon when their two other housemates weren’t present. The saddest aspect, though, is that the former waited until after dark to dump his body in the Bird Stream woodland by encasing it in a canvas boy scout tent, dragging it outside, and driving it there. On May 1, 1973, the victim was discovered, leading to the arrest of his legitimate attacker based on ambiguous evidence found within their Orono home, including the hammer, bloody fingerprints, and blood spatters.
Richard was really tried for second-degree murder in connection with this case in 1973, but the jury ultimately found him not guilty due to the strength of his self-defense defence. He moved to New York at that time in an effort to start over and enrolled at Pace University’s School of Nursing, where he eventually graduated with a Master’s degree in medical science (1973-1978). After that, he found work at Mount Sinai Medical Centre, where he worked his way up the corporate ladder until he became a paediatric surgery nurse, a position he kept even after being arrested and found not guilty of a sexual assault in 1988.
Then came the infamous Last Call Killings, a string of murders allegedly committed by Richard between 1991 and 1993 against four gay and bisexual individuals who were last seen in Manhattan piano bars. Later, these men—54-year-old Peter Stickney Anderson, 57-year-old Thomas Richard Mulcahy, 44-year-old Anthony Edward Marrero, and 56-year-old Michael Sakara—were discovered horrifyingly dismembered in garbage cans alongside Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York roadways. Authorities were able to identify Richard thanks to DNA, latent fingerprints, composite sketches, and other tangible evidence like the bags from where the discovered remains were recovered.
Where is Richard Rogers Now?
On April 28, 2001, Richard was finally taken into custody after a local police approached him and pretended to be a victim of credit card theft in order to get him to consent to being questioned. He ended up in detention as a result and unknowingly admitted to knowing Michael Sakara before realising the police had already connected him to the killings and it was time to hire an attorney. Several more pieces of circumstantial evidence, including a narcotic used in date rape, were found during the subsequent search of his residence while he was being held under a $1 million bond, leading to his formal indictment.
The videotapes of horror flicks, a road map of New Jersey, polaroids of shirtless males with drawn stab wounds, and underlined verses in his Bible referring to dismemberment all played significant roles in the prosecution’s case against Roger. Since forensic evidence connected him to both Thomas and Anthony’s cases—the only two homicides for which he was charged—he was actually given a plea deal on October 26, 2005, but he declined it.
Therefore, on November 10, 2005, a jury found Richard guilty of both first-degree murder counts as well as two counts of obstructing his own arrest after a trial and 334 hours of deliberations. As a result, he received two sentences of 30 years to life in prison plus an additional two terms of two and a half years. As a result, the serial killer is still in prison at the age of 73. He is presently incarcerated at Trenton’s maximum security New Jersey State Prison serving two consecutive life sentences, per the records of the New Jersey State Department of Corrections.