Charles Rogers (murder suspect)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to navigationJump to search

Charles Rogers
Born	Charles Frederick Rogers December 30, 1921 Houston, Texas, U.S.
Disappeared	June 23, 1965 (aged 43) Houston, Texas, U.S.
Status	Declared dead in absentia July 1975 (aged 53)
Alma mater	University of Houston
Occupation	Seismologist, pilot
Known for	Possible involvement with the 1963 Assassination of 35th US president John F. Kennedy and committing The Ice Box Murders.

Charles Frederick Rogers (December 30, 1921^[1] – disappeared June 23, 1965) was an American seismologist, pilot, and murder suspect who disappeared in June 1965 after police discovered the dismembered bodies of his elderly parents in the refrigerator of the Houston home all three shared, in what the media later dubbed “The Icebox Murders”.^[2] Rogers has never been found and was declared dead in absentia in July 1975. He remains the only suspect in the murders, which are still considered unsolved.

Contents

• 1Background and education
• 2Murders and disappearance
• 3Allegations of involvement in the assassination of JFK
• 4Aftermath
• 5In popular culture
• 6See also
• 7References
• 8Further reading

Background and education[edit]

Charles Rogers enrolled at Texas A&M University in 1942, but later dropped out.^[3] He then enrolled at the University of Houston, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in nuclear physics. During World War II, Rogers was a pilot in the United States Navy and also served in the Office of Naval Intelligence.^[4] After the war, he worked as a seismologist for Shell Oil for nine years.^[1] He abruptly quit his job in 1957 without giving an explanation.^[3]

Friends and associates of Rogers later said that he was highly intelligent and had a talent for finding gas, oil and gold for the companies for which he worked. He also spoke seven languages and had an interest in ham radios.^[5] In the mid-1950s, Rogers joined the Civil Air Patrol, where he reportedly met David Ferrie, an alleged conspirator in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.^[6]

Murders and disappearance[edit]

By 1965, Rogers was unemployed and living with his elderly parents, Fred Christopher (born January 19, 1884) and Edwina Ivor Rogers (born October 8, 1892), in the Montrose neighborhood of Houston.^[3] Described as “reclusive”,^[4][7] Rogers was reported to have communicated with his parents by way of notes slipped under the door. Neighbors were unaware that Rogers lived with his parents as he generally left the home before dawn and did not return until after dark.^[3]

On June 23, 1965, two Houston police officers were dispatched to the Rogers’ home to conduct a welfare check after Edwina’s nephew Marvin reported that his phone calls to his aunt had gone unanswered for days. After receiving no answering after knocking, the officers forced their way into the Rogers’ home. Upon entering, the officers found nothing unusual but noticed food sitting on the dining room table.^[8] One officer opened the refrigerator and found what appeared to be numerous cuts of washed, unwrapped meat neatly stacked on the shelves.^[3] The officer later recalled that he thought the meat was that of a butchered hog.^[9] As the officer was closing the door, he noticed two human heads visible through the clear glass of the vegetable bin.^[10] The heads were those of Fred and Edwina Rogers. What the officer initially thought were unwrapped cuts of hog meat were the couple’s dismembered limbs and torsos.^[3] Police later discovered the couple’s organs in a nearby sewer (the organs had been removed, cut up and flushed down the toilet) while other remains were never found.^[4]

Police determined that Fred and Edwina Rogers had been killed on June 20, Father’s Day.^[5] An autopsy showed that Fred was bludgeoned to death with a claw hammer.^[3] His eyes had been gouged out and his genitalia were removed. Edwina had been beaten and shot, execution style, in the head.^[5] Police further said that the bodies were dismembered in the upstairs bathroom by a person “with some knowledge of anatomy“. There was little blood in the house and it appeared it had been thoroughly cleaned after the murders.^[3] What little blood was found led to Charles’ bedroom. There, police found a bloodstained keyhole saw but no trace of Rogers himself.^[2] A search for Rogers was launched and a warrant was issued for him as a material witness to the crime, but he was never found.^[11]

Allegations of involvement in the assassination of JFK[edit]

Rogers’ life was documented in the 1992 book The Man on the Grassy Knoll by John R. Craig and Philip A. Rogers.^[4][7] According to this work, Rogers was a CIA agent who was postulated to have impersonated Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City and, along with Charles Harrelson, was one of two shooters involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.^{[4][2][7][12]} The authors contend that Rogers, Harrelson, and Chauncey Holt were the “three tramps” arrested in Dealey Plaza after the assassination, and that Rogers murdered his parents because his mother was tracking his many telephone calls.^[4][7][12] In this account, Rogers fled to Guatemala.^[13] Publishers Weekly reviewed the book stating: “The authors do a workmanlike job with their thesis, but the degree of poetic license, in terms of reconstructed dialogue and attributed thought, seems excessive here, and sourcing is virtually nonexistent. Assassination buffs, however, will welcome the book for its novelty value and its easy readability.”^[7]

Aftermath[edit]

In 1975, a Houston judge declared Rogers legally dead so his estate could be probated.^[9] The case still remains officially unsolved and Rogers remains the only suspect.^[5]

Houston forensic accountant Hugh Gardenier and his wife Martha have continued to investigate the case and concluded that Rogers did murder his parents and was later killed in Honduras.^[13] While they have dismissed John R. Craig and Philip A. Rogers’s claim that Rogers was a CIA operative due to a lack of evidence, they admit that Rogers did have dealings with contract workers for the CIA when he worked as a seismologist.

The Gardeniers believe that Rogers planned the murder of his parents for years because his father was abusive and both parents were “devious con artists“. According to them, Fred worked as a bookie who regularly engaged in illegal activities such as gambling and fraud. They believe he continued abusing Charles into adulthood and began stealing large sums of money from him.^[5] The Gardeniers claim that after Rogers killed and dismembered his parents, he fled the U.S. for Mexico and was never found because he was aided by “powerful friends” he met through his ham radio hobby and while working for various oil and mining companies.^[5] They have theorized that Rogers eventually made his way to Honduras, where he was killed over a wage dispute with miners.^[14]

In October 2003, Redbud Publishing released The Ice Box Murders, a novel written by the Gardeniers.^[15] According to a review in the Houston Press: “The Ice Box Murders is written as fact-based fiction and supposition. There are many unnamed characters in the book: various politicians and attorneys as well as the eyewitness who said he saw Rogers in Honduras after 1965.”^[14] Publishers Weekly also referred to the novel as “fact-based fiction”.^[15]

The house in which the murders took place was located at 1815 Driscoll Street. After the murders, the house remained empty and unsold. It was torn down in 1972. The lot remained empty until 2000 when condominiums were built on the lot.^[5]

In popular culture[edit]

Rogers is featured in two novels by James Ellroy: American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand.^[2]

The murder case involving Rogers, as well as Hugh and Martha Gardenier looking into the case, is the subject of Episode 41 of the Criminal podcast, titled “Open Case”.^[16]

004c.pdf

Houston Texas PD Investigation Confirmed by more and more first hand witnesses. Fort Bragg Psyops working with Landsdale, Wiliam F Burns (father of William J Burns) were CIA DIA overthrow team and hit JFK William Francis Burns was an American Army major general who later served as the Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency from 1988 to 1989 under President Ronald Reagan. He graduated from La Salle University in 1954 and joined the Army from ROTC in that same year. Wikipedia

Click to access Item%2004c.pdf

To: Edgar Tatro
From: Bill Cheslock
Re: Houston Police Department’s Investigation of Three Tramps in Dealey Plaza
Date: November 16, 1991, JFK Symposium, Dallas Texas
John Craig – Homicide Division, Houston D.P. He gave a description of the tramps, plus a
little background of each:
Charles Frederick Rogers – Alias “Montoya” and “Rojas.” Worked for the C IA and was a
physicist. Charles Harrelson- Taller tramp. John Craig of the Houston P.D. knows Harrelson, as the latter’s brother Claude worked for the detective.

Chauncey Holt- Has come forward, and given himself up to Houston Police. He says he is the
older tramp in the pictures. He tried to stay out of pictures taken of them by standing in
back of the other two tramps. He even made funny faces to make identification difficult.
Holt has given eight hours of video deposition. John Craig believes Holt to be for real.
Thes older tramp is now 70 years old, considered a genius, worked for the CIA, Organized
Crime, was a master document forger, and was once tried for assassination, but acquitted.
Holt said that, in addition to getting old and wishing to tell the truth, he is also very
tired of being mistaken for E. Howard Hunt. Detective Craig believes that this can be a
major break in the JFK case if Holt is for real. Finally, Chauncey Holt was willing to come
to the Symposium, and tell his story, if heavy security could be guaranteed. This could not
be guaranteed, and he thus refused to come to Dallas.

Next in his presentation, Detective Craig introduced Lois Gibson, who works for the
Houston P.D. as a forensic artist. In addition, she graduated from the F.B.I. school for
forensic artistry, and has worked for the Bureau for the past ten years. She has one hundred
and fifty cases pending at the moment, and has been involved in thousands of cases requiring OrtaTied court forensic artists.

The third individual panelist, Phil Rogers, gave a biographical sketch of each of the
three tramps;

Charles Frederick Rogers- Born 1921, Houston, Texas. In 1965, he butchered his parents and
preserved them in a refrigerator after cutting them to pieces. When friends started to get
Jsuspicious, they called police to the Rogers’ house. Charles, living in the house all this
time, was able to flee out the back, and vanished. Found in the house, besides the bodies
in the refrigerator, was a sophisticated short wave set connected to an antenna, similar to
Those used by intelligence agents. He has had no; job since 1957, but was always well
dressed. He had a pilot’s license, and flew for Air America. He had numerous post office
boxes under assumed names.

Panelist Rogers stated that the Houston P.D. requested the FBI to put Frederick Rogers
into the national computer system (N.C.I.C.). Just recently, the Houston P.D. discovered
that the FBI originally never fulfilled that request, and has since refused subsequent
requests by the Houston P.D. to put.Charles Frederick Rogers into the computer. Houston
police officials find this reluctance by the FBI to be: very strange, to say the least.

Besides being employed the CIA, Rogers attended the University of Houston as a physics major, is a linguist, was in the Civil Air Patrol in the 1950’s and held a similar position to that
of David Ferrie, worked as a seismologist in Canada, was declared legally dead in 1975, but
the Houston P.D. believes that he is now living in Central America. Police officials believe
that his parents saw or heard something they should not have in 1965, and paid for their
mistake with their lives.

Charles Harrelson- Born in Huntsville, Texas. While living in California, he was presented
with the “Salesman of the Year” award for selling books. He then turned to a life of crime,
and in 1968, was charged with murder. With the murder of Federal Judge Wood, he was on the run from police authorities, and when finally cornered in El Paso in a six hour standoff,
admitted to being in Dealey Plaza, and killihg President Kennedy. He later retracted this
statement, saying that he was high on cocaine. He is now in the Marion, Illinois institution
for murdering Judge Wood.

Chauncey Holt- Born 1921 in Kentucky. Known to have artistic talent, was in the Air Force
and was court martialed while serving in that armed forces branch. Knew hit man for the
Detroit mob named Bob Zowick. Holt was an accountant for mobster Meyer Lansky in Miami, and was a member of the International Rescue Committee, which was a CIA group.

CHAUNCEY HOLT’S STORY
Holt admitted to printing Lee Harvey Oswald’s Fair Play for Cuba leaflets while in
California. He admitted to being on the street corner.rwith Oswald in New Orleans when the
staged skirmish went on with Anti Castro Cubans. Others present were Frank Belcher, and Leroy
Young, shown in the picture. Holt says that when he realized the photo was being taken, he
started walking away. One anecdote Holt added to this New Orleans staged show was that they had to talk Oswald into going through with it, as he got cold feet as the time neared.
Forensic artist Lois Gibson studied the New Orleans picture, and agrees that it is indeed
Chauncey Holt. She testified that the skull shape, ears, shoulders, elbows all fit the known
photos of Holt. The photo she used was a still made by the television station crew in New
Orleans in August 1963. She also forensically connected Holt with the older tramp in the
Dealey Plaza photos taken on the day of the assassination. She has successfully linked his
nasal fold, nose, chin intersections, and ears with known photos of him and with the Dealey
Plaza photos of the tramps.

Lois Gibson used her forensic expertise on photos of Charles Harrelson, as Holt identified
him as being one of the tramps. She compared known photos of Harrelson with the Dealey Plaza tall tramp, and she concluded that it is indeed Charles Harrelson in the tramp photo. She came to this conclusion because of exact profile, wrinkles, mouth distance from the chin, mouth distance from the chin bone, nose, and ears. In addition she has concluded that
Harrelson’s shaving habits are the same in both photos, and his side burns are only.one
millimeter different from a mug shot of ten years ago.

Finally, she states that a photo of an opposite face profile examined by her shows a mirror image of Charles Harrelson.

Wryly, she told the hushed audience that he is smiling in the tramp photo.

The third tramp identified by Holt is Charles Frederick Rogers, also known as ‘Montoya”
and “Rojas.” At this point, the audience was told that RogerS fled his parents’ home as
police arrived, and left his pistol in his room. There is reason to believe that it was a
CIA issued pistol. Forensic artist Gibson then continued with her analysis of the third tramp.
It was very difficult finding photos of Rogers, as he was very careful not to have many left
around. However, Houston Police were able to go back to his high school year book of 1939-’40 and his college picture taken at Sam Houston State,, and use these to compare with the tramp photos.

Gibson concluded the following, after analyzing the photos: the subject’s nose,
ears shape, and mouth are identical. Conclusive for Gibson, however, are: exact hair wave,
nose shape is exact, eye sockets are exact, and shadows formed by the inside of his ears are
exact. Finally, she detects an unusual gape in the walk of the tramp Holt says is Rogers.
Her conclusion is that the third tramp in the photo is indeed Charles Frederick Rogers.
An anecdote told to the audience revealed the fact that Rogers’ father worked as a bookie for
none other than Carlos Marcello, in the Houston area.

Another twist to this segment of the story is told to us by John Craig. It is known
that David Ferrie drove a few hundred miles through a storm to go “skating” at Winterland
Park. The manager of the rink told Houston Police that Charles Frederick Rogers used that
rink for phone calls and meetings all the time. We now have Ferrie and Rogers linked to at
least two activities; “skating” and the Civil Air Patrol.

The panel, at this point, relayed Holt’s account of his and the other tramps’ activities
in Dealey Plaza on Novembember 22, 1963. First of all, he admitted that it was he who
prepared the phony Secret Service credentials for the bogus men around the grassy knoll, while he was in Los Angelos. ;While in Dealey Plaza, one of the tramps came up to him and said, “Hi I’m Chuck Harrelson,” prior to the assassination. Holt said that he was driving around the parking lot in back of the knoll in a station wagon from Arizona, with two other men known as Nicoletti and Nocera (sic?). Holt testified that he did not see the actual assassination, but heard the shots from the rear of the TSBD. His instructions were to meet the other tramps in the railroad yard and hide in the ninth box car from the engine. This they did, but were soon caught by police and were questioned outside of the box car. Holt, who had a nose bleed and stuffed kleenex up his nostrils to stop the bleeding, testified that he and the other two tramps presented phony Tax and Treasury Department credentials, which Holt said he made up with the bogus Secret Service credentials, to the police officers. Holt added that he told the police they were working under cover.

---

The 50 caliber sniper rifle’s threat is a blend of long range and massive power. Here is Barrett’s description of the power of its Model M82A1, widely available on the civilian market: This revolutionary . 50 caliber semi-automatic rifle allows sophisticated targets to be destroyed or disabled by a single soldier

Craig Taylor of Vancouver, Wash., is a believer in the big bang theory.

That is, the bigger the caliber, the bigger the bang.

The two .50-caliber rifles Taylor custom made for himself have set a world record, tied another and set an unofficial world record for the relatively new .50-caliber shooter.

The .50-caliber was used on the B-17 Flying Fortress bomber in World War II and Navy battleships. Today it’s used on the turret of U.S. tanks.

But when Taylor says his guns are the biggest and the loudest rifles around, it’s still a shock.

Shooters must wear both earplugs and earmuffs for adequate protection. The guns are so powerful, bystanders have been known to suffer from nosebleeds and blackouts.

The 50 caliber sniper rifle’s threat is a blend of long range and massive power. Here is Barrett’s description of the power of its Model M82A1, widely available on the civilian market: This revolutionary . 50 caliber semi-automatic rifle allows sophisticated targets to be destroyed or disabled by a single soldier

———————————–

The Dallas police officers, relaxing at this point, told the tramps that they had to bring them in anyway for questioning.

This could explain why the police officers didn’t cuff them, and permitted them to walk in a casual manner to the police building.

Once inside, the police officers, according to Holt, called in Will Fritz and FBI agent
Shanklin. Again, Holt and the two other tramps showed their phony credentials, and , according to Holt, Shanklin let them go without any further procedures.’ Finally, Holt said that he was driven to Red Bird Air Port by Jim Braden, and his final destination found him in South
America.

At this point, there was a question and answer period. I went to the microphone, and
asked the panel three questions: 1) How did Holt know the Secret Service’s color of the day
for credentials? Answer: He couldn’t find out until the very last minute. 2) How did Holt
get into the rear parking area, if it was secured for two hours before the assassination?
Answer: Holt told them that he was given a key to get in the parking area. 3) Did Holt tell
them what them what they were to do if they weren’t caught in the box car by police?
Answer: Still go to the Red Bird Air Port.

Chauncey Holt reiterates his statement that he was behind the TSBD when shots were fired
at the presidential limousine. He also submitted in his testimony that he truly believes that
he was put out back in the rail road yard to be used as a potential patsy, if it didn’t work
out with Oswald for one reason or another.