Richard Westall Rogers Jr. was ultimately apprehended and recognised as a serial killer in 2001, but it is thought that he had been acting inhumanely since the late 1960s. Even though he was only a teenager at the time, his father’s early teachings on animal hunting and his tendency to be a loner presumably assisted him in developing the skills necessary for his offences. Let’s learn more about both his proven and potential victims given that HBO’s “Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York” has painstakingly examined his case as well.
How Many People Did Richard Rogers Kill?
According to stories, despite being gay himself, Richard’s first victim was an elderly neighbour who he reportedly attacked with a kitchen knife in the late 1960s after she appeared to reject his advances. In actuality, he was later institutionalised for a short time to evaluate his mental health, but after that, he was discharged and even permitted to return to school until he received his diploma in 1968. Thus, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he experienced no accidents while attending Florida Southern College to earn his Bachelor of Arts in French (1968–1972), only for everything to alter a year later.
Richard actually enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Maine and shortly after that moved into a two-story house in Orono, where he first met Frederic Alan Spencer. The 22-year-old was one of his three housemates, but this pair allegedly got along very poorly, even if they didn’t get into any serious fights until the tragic April 28, 1973. According to sources, it happened around today afternoon when the former hit the latter eight times with a hammer over the back of his head before covering him with a plastic bag till he went away.
The saddest thing, though, is probably that Richard decided to wait until it was dark before dumping Frederic’s body into his car after wrapping it in a nylon boy scout tent. At that point, he made the decision to take Route 116 via Old Town for about a minute till he arrived at the Bird Stream forest, where he savagely dumped the unmistakably bloodied remains of his victim. However, on May 1, 1973, he was discovered by two cyclists, and as a consequence of the hammer, bloody fingerprints, and blood splatters recovered inside their home, his legitimate attacker was apprehended.
In relation to Frederic’s death in late 1973, Richard was tried on a single count of second-degree murder; however, his claim of self-defense was so convincing that the jury ultimately found him not guilty. He said that the latter was the one who had attacked him on the afternoon of April 28 with a roofing hammer, forcing him to fight back and ultimately injure him when he persisted in the conflict. After these legal processes, the then 23-year-old actually moved to New York, where he eventually changed into both a paediatric surgical nurse and an alleged serial killer.
Richard is thought to be responsible for killing 21-year-old Matthew John Pierro in 1982; he was discovered dead off a dirt road close to Interstate 4 in Lake Mary, Florida, with six knife wounds, strangling marks, and a nipple that had been chewed off. In Orlando, Florida, where the former was at the time attending a college reunion, he was last seen exiting a homosexual bar. Additionally, the now-convicted felon may be a key player in the 1986 murder of Jack Franklin Andrews, whose body was discovered partially wrapped in quilts and waste bags at a rest area along Route 8 in Litchfield, Connecticut.
It’s important to note that Richard has even been charged with allegedly sexually abusing a man whom he had invited back to his Staten Island flat after first meeting him on July 11, 1988, at a Manhattan bar. The man apparently drank orange juice in the former’s apartment before falling asleep for several hours, waking up with his limbs shackled to the bed, getting injected with something, and then awaking outside. Despite the fact that a rape kit had been negative, the professional nurse was detained and charged with this attack in August of that same year. She was later found not guilty after a nonjury trial in December.
Then there are the Last Call Murders, when it is said that Richard enticed drunk gay and bisexual men out of Manhattan piano bars with the explicit purpose of making them his victims. The first one was Peter Stickney Anderson, 54, who was killed on May 9, 1991; the next morning, his dismembered body was found in a garbage can on the westbound side of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. On July 8, 1992, 57-year-old Thomas Richard Mulcahy, a married father of four from Massachusetts who was in New York on business, became the second known victim of this spree. Two days later, Mulcahy was discovered in five trash bags alongside Route 72 in Woodland Township, New Jersey.
Anthony Edward Marrero, a local gay prostitute who was 44 years old, was discovered in six plastic bags on May 10, 1993, off Crow Hill Road in Manchester Township, New Jersey; both his and Thomas’ fragmented parts had been cleaned. The latest victim of this was openly gay 56-year-old Michael J. Sakara, who was killed on July 30, 1993; his stabbed, dismembered, and washed body was discovered on July 31 and August 8 at two locations 10 miles apart in New York. The three men before them had reportedly simply been stabbed, not beaten.
How Many People Did Richard Rogers Kill?
Richard Rogers has only been found guilty of two homicides, despite the fact that it is thought he killed at least seven men between the 1970s and the 1990s while also injuring numerous more on the way. Since The Last Call Killer had packed the body parts of his victims in bags, forensic technology had helped reveal fingerprints from those bags, and they had pointed directly to him in two instances, according to confirmed study.
Thus, Richard was ultimately found guilty of two charges of first-degree murder in connection with the passing of both Thomas Richard Mulcahy and Anthony Edward Marrero, as well as two counts of obstructing his own arrest. But it’s important to note that the aforementioned serial murderer is also thought to have murdered a few more men in Maine, Florida, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and New York.
