Oba Chandler - The Rogers Family Murders
Willshire, Ohio - May, 1989
Willshire is a small, rural village, located in Van Wert County, Ohio. It is quintessentially middle-American - residents mostly work on their farms, in one of the village’s few small businesses or in nearby factories. There is a library, a post office, an antique store, a couple of family-run restaurants, a park and a church. The Ohio/Indiana state line is about a half-mile to the west of Willshire, and St Marys River runs to the east. It is a close knit and safe community where neighbors look out for one another.
The Rogers family consisted of parents Hal and Joan (Jo), both 36-years-old, and their two daughters, 17-year-old Michelle and 14-year-old Christe. Hal and Jo dated in high school and married right after graduation, in 1971, when Jo got pregnant. Michelle was born Feb. 22, 1972 and Christe on Oct. 6, 1974.
Jo, Michelle (standing) Christe and Hal Rogers (source: Tampa Bay Times)
Jo was the outgoing and gregarious of the two. Hal, on the other hand, was introverted and quiet. It was Jo who brought out Hal’s fun side, dragging him onto the dancefloor and making him to listen to country music with her. They had starkly different personalities, so in a way, they completed each other.
The older daughter, Michelle, was reserved and could be considered aloof, while Christe was bubbly and always cheerful. Growing up on a farm, both girls loved animals. Christe was a cheerleader, popular at school, and made friends easily. She was also the apple of her Hal’s eye. Michelle was shy and more of a tomboy. She enjoyed going to parties where she spent time huddled with her close friends, sneaking beer and smoking cigarettes. Michelle and her boyfriend, Jeff Feasby, had not been together for long, but had known each other since seventh grade. It being the beginning of the relationship, the two were inseparable.
Hal and Jo Rogers worked extremely hard. Neither of them came from money, but they earned a respectable living through honest (somewhat unforgiving) work. There are no breaks in the world of dairy farming, and the whole family took part in ensuring the smooth running of the farm. Jo also worked nights at Peyton’s Northern, a distribution center for health and beauty products, where she drove a forklift and worked the assembly line.
Life was not easy on Jo. Between her night job, farming and being a mom, she hardly slept. Although overworked and exhausted, she did her best to stay upbeat and positive for her family. Each morning, after helping Hal milk the cows and getting the girls to school, Jo and Hal would go eat breakfast in town. The two ate dinner out when they could, just to get a break from the animals and farm machinery which dominated their lives.
The spark Jo had once possessed, however, was not as bright as it once had been. She was beautiful in high school, with a sweet, kind smile and warm hazel eyes. Her high school yearbook photo shows a happy, carefree young woman, full of life. But the years took an incredible toll on her. She had always been slim, but she lost weight to the point that she appeared gaunt and unwell. Sleeplessness drained the color from her face and dark circles formed under her eyes. While she was only 36, she could have passed for much older.
Evil In The Family
The last three years had been painful for the family. There was a predator in their midst, who was no stranger - it was Hal’s brother, John. John Rogers lived on the family property in a trailer, and also worked on the farm.
John Rogers was described by locals as a bit strange. He would walk around wearing Army fatigues and claimed to have gone on several missions with the Secret Service and the CIA. No one knew how dangerous he really was. That is, not until police came to his trailer and arrested him for the rape of his ex-girlfriend.
The pair had recently broken up, but she continued to stay in the trailer with John until she found somewhere else to live. She reported that when she returned to the trailer one evening, she was ambushed by a man wearing a mask who handcuffed her and put a blindfold over her eyes. It wasn’t difficult for her to recognize from his voice that it was John. He threatened her with a knife to stop her from crying out, then he raped her. He videotaped the entire thing, she told the police.
The police obtained a warrant to search John Rogers’s trailer. Not only did they find the video the woman referred to, they also discovered pictures of a teenage girl, nude and blindfolded, and audiotapes of the same girl screaming and pleading with her attacker to be left alone. The girl in the pictures and in the audio was none other than John’s niece and Hal’s daughter, Michelle. John had been molesting her since she was just 14.
John Rogers (source: Tampa Bay Times)
When Hal and Jo found out, they were distraught. How could they have missed something so horrible happening right under their noses? They wondered. John got away with it mainly by taking advantage of the times Hal and Jo were away on farm business. He routinely threatened Michelle, warning her that if she told anyone, he would kill her.
The revelations ripped the family apart. “If I’d known...I’d have killed the son of a bitch to start with,” Hal would later say.
Shockingly, Hal and John’s mother, Irene Rogers, sided with John over her granddaughter. She would tell people around town that Michelle was lying about the whole thing, despite the evidence the police found in John’s trailer. Hal was livid, and promptly cut his mother out of his life.
John denied the whole thing, claiming he had been set up. Of course, no one bought it. He ended up being sentenced to 7 to 25 years in prison for the rape of his ex-girlfriend. The charges brought against him in Michelle’s case, however, were dropped when she refused to testify. She was determined to live as normal a life as possible - going to school, parties, and spending time with her boyfriend. Not a life filled with lawyers, court dates and constant tension.
Of the four family members, it was probably Hal who took John’s abuse of Michelle the hardest. He was overcome with guilt and fell into a depression, constantly tormented with thoughts of how he could have let his own brother inflict such evil on his daughter for so long.
An Escape, At Last
For the first time in their lives, Jo, Michelle and Christe were leaving Ohio (not counting the times Jo crossed into Indiana for work) on their first real vacation. They were ecstatic. Not to mention, after all they had been through, they needed the trip more than ever. Hal thought it would be best that the three have a girls’ trip, and he would stay home to tend the farm.
Michelle and Christe had been planning the trip for weeks. They would leave on May 26 and drive the 1000 mile journey to Florida, where they would spend a week sightseeing - the Jacksonville Zoo, Disney’s MGM Studios, and SeaWorld were just a few of the spots on their itinerary. It was hardly going to be a relaxing trip spent on the beach, which Jo likely would have preferred, but she wanted the girls to be happy.
They set off on May 26, 1989, around noon. Jo had been working at Peyton’s Northern the night before and spent the morning catching up on sleep. In their 1986 light blue Oldsmobile Calais, the trio drove south on the I-75, all the way through Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, until they arrived in Georgia. The 500 mile journey would have taken around 8 hours. They checked into a motel that night, slept, and woke up early to complete the second leg of the journey, driving the length of Georgia, until they arrived in Florida. Their first stop was the Jacksonville Zoo.
The vacation carried on this way for the next four days - sightseeing, driving, checking into a motel for the night, and doing it all again. On Monday the 29th, Jo wrote a postcard to Hal, telling him about how the girls were dragging her everywhere.
On Thursday, June 1, they left Orlando headed for Tampa, where they planned to go to Busch Gardens, another theme park. If Jo was lucky, they might even spend some time on the beach.
Once they arrived in Tampa, they drove around for a little while looking for their motel, the Days Inn at Rocky Point. Eventually Jo pulled over to look at the map, which was on a brochure she had picked up with tourist information about Clearwater Beach.
As Jo sat studying the map, a man approached the car. He was white, probably in his mid to late 30s, with sandy hair and a mustache; rather unremarkable looking. The man asked them if they were lost, as he noticed their Ohio plates and assumed they were not from the area. He personalized the conversation by telling them that he too was originally from Ohio.
On the Clearwater Beach brochure, the man wrote down directions to the motel. Then he made them an offer: would they like to come out on his boat that evening to watch the sunset? He seemed friendly and helpful, so why not? Jo thought. The girls also liked the idea. He told Jo how to get to the boat launch. Once there, look out for a blue and white boat, he added. They thanked him, and went on their way.
They checked into the Days Inn at around 12:30PM. Jo wrote down the directions he had given them to the boat launch and the description of the boat on the motel stationary.
It’s not clear how they spent the afternoon. Perhaps they ended up relaxing at the beach after a jam-packed week of sightseeing. They ate dinner at the restaurant attached to the motel that evening, where they were spotted by another patron, a businessman from Texas, in Tampa for a conference. He ate his meal alone. Michelle said hello to him as they passed his table on their way out, around 7:30pm.
They went back to their room briefly before heading out to the boat launch. While in the room, they took a few photos, one of Michelle in white shorts and blue bikini top, sitting on the ground, sunburned and staring into the camera. The other photo was of the view of Tampa Bay from their balcony.
Michelle in the motel room before the drove to the boat launch (source: Murderpedia)
The photo taken of Tampa Bay from the motel room balcony (source: Murderpedia)
Once they were ready, they got in the car and drove the mile to the boat launch to meet their new acquaintance. It is believed they boarded the boat between 8:30pm and 9pm, just as the sun was beginning to set. Little did they know, it would be the final sunset they would see.
Bodies In The Bay
June 4, 1989
The calm, turquoise water of Tampa Bay glistened in the morning sun. A sailboat passed under the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, a structure which stretches over 4 miles in length, connecting St. Petersburg, Florida and the unincorporated community of Terra Ceia. The tourists on the sailboat were enjoying the view and the warm breeze on their faces.
The feelings of tranquility and contentment were short-lived, however. As the boat glided through the water, several passengers spotted something bobbing gently up and down. As they got closer, it became evident that the object floating just meters away was a body.
The Coast Guard was notified of the grim discovery, and without delay, a rescue boat was sent out to the area. On arrival, the crew attempted to pull the body up out of the water and onto the rescue boat, but this proved difficult - a rope tied to a 30lb concrete block had been tied around their neck, weighing them down. A member of the crew severed the rope, pulled the body up onto the boat, and placed it inside a body bag.
The victims’ wrists were bound behind their backs with yellow rope (source: Wikipedia)
As the rescue crew began making their way back to land, another radio call came in - a second body had been discovered in the water, two miles north of the first, at the St. Petersburg Pier. Then, as the rescue crew were making their way to recover the second body, yet another call came in. A third body had been found, 180m east of the second.
Like the first body, the second and third were also weighed down with 30lb concrete blocks, attached to rope tied around their necks. Each victim was floating face down, their ankles bound together and their hands tied behind their backs with yellow rope. Their mouths were taped shut with duct tape. They were nude from the waist down.
All three victims were white females, and as far as the rescue crew could tell, they were relatively young.
The Investigation Begins
Investigators in this case were, by all accounts, starting from scratch. The identities of the women were unknown; none of them had any ID on their persons. They were taken to the medical examiner’s office in St. Petersburg, where it was determined that they had likely been in the water between three and five days. Given the warm water temperature in the bay, the bodies had decomposed faster than they would have had the water been colder. The decomposition process created gases which caused them to float to the water’s surface, pulling the concrete blocks up with them.
In order to find out where the women had ended up in the water, investigators asked researchers at the University of South Florida to analyze the currents for that time period. Their findings indicated that they had entered in the middle of the bay, not from a bridge or shoreline.
Who Were The Victims?
It wasn’t long before state and local media picked up on the story. Who were they? Were they local? Given the number of tourists visiting Tampa every summer, and the fact that no one had reported them missing, it seemed likely that they were not from the area.
On June 8, four days after the bodies were recovered, a maid at a Days Inn Motel in Tampa alerted her manager that room 251 had gone untouched for days. The guests who had checked into the room on June 1, a mother and her two daughters, had left their belongings in the room but had not slept in the beds or used the towels. The manager of the motel, realizing he hadn’t seen the three since they arrived, and remembering the reports of the three bodies found in Tampa Bay on the local news, began to connect the dots.
When the police arrived at the motel, they were informed that the room was registered to Joan Rogers, and her two daughters, Michelle and Christe, of Willshire, Ohio. The room was as they expected - open suitcases on the ground, souvenirs they had purchased during their trip had been placed on surfaces around the room. Detectives took a roll of film from the room and had it developed. The roll included the photos mentioned previously, of Michelle and the view of Tampa Bay.
To find out if the bodies found in the bay were those of the Rogers women, detectives contacted Joan Rogers’s husband Hal back in Ohio, asking for his wife and daughters’ dental records.
A Terrifying Fate
The dental records confirmed what Hal feared the most: his entire immediate family had been murdered while on vacation in Florida, and their bodies had been found floating like debris in Tampa Bay.
The autopsy carried out on Jo and the girls revealed just how horrifying their final moments must have been. The water in their lungs showed that they had been thrown in the water while they were still alive. Given that they were nude below the waist, sexual assault seemed likely, but any forensic evidence that might have been left behind to definitively prove this had been washed away. The same went for any other kind of forensic evidence, such as fingerprints, fibres or hairs: the bodies had effectively been wiped clean.
The Investigation Continues
As in every murder investigation, those closest to the victim(s) are looked at first. In this case, that was Hal Rogers. Jo and the girls were supposed to return home to Willshire on June 3, but they never did. Investigators found it odd that Hal waited three days before he reported them missing.
When speaking with Hal, they described him as cold and unfeeling, not showing the emotions one would expect after finding out such gut-wrenching news. But by nature, that’s just who Hal was - a restrained individual with a hard exterior. His manner with detectives was no reflection of how he truly felt about the brutal murders of his wife and daughters.
Hal was quickly ruled out as a suspect due to his habit of frequenting local restaurants for breakfast and dinner while his family was away. There were multiple people who saw him each day that week as he ate his meals. It would have been pretty much impossible for him to be in Florida the night they were killed, but back in Willshire in time for breakfast.
The Rogers’s ‘86 Oldsmobile Calais parked at the boat launch (source: Murderpedia)
The next logical step for investigators was to locate the Rogers’s car, the light blue ‘86 Oldsmobile Calais. It wasn’t long before it was found parked at a public boat launch along the Courtney Campbell Parkway, a mile from the Days Inn motel. The car appeared to have sat untouched since June 1, the last time it had been driven. Inside detectives found two sets of directions written by different individuals, one on a brochure for Clearwater Beach, and the other on Days Inn stationary.
The car and its contents were entered into evidence, the notes taken to a forensic document examiner. Samples of Jo, Michelle and Christe’s handwriting were provided for comparison. It was determined that the note on the Days Inn stationary was Jo’s handwriting. It read:
turn rt (w on 60) – 2 1/2 mi – on rt side alt before bridge
blue w/wht
The directions to the boat launch written by Joan Rogers (source: Youtube)
The handwriting on the Clearwater Beach brochure, however, matched neither Jo’s nor her that of her daughters. It read:
Courtney Cambell Causeway
RT 60 Days Inn
The directions to the Days Inn motel written by the unknown individual, on the Rogers’s brochure (source: Wikipedia)
A Theory Develops
The handwritten notes found in the car were vital to investigators' ability to come up with a theory as to what had happened to Jo, Michelle and Christe. It seemed likely that an unknown person had given them directions to their motel, writing them on the brochure.
Jo had written directions to a boat launch on the Days Inn stationary. “blue w/wht”, investigators assumed, was most likely a description of the boat - blue and white. Given that they had entered the water from the middle of the bay, as the researchers from the University of South Florida told investigators, whoever had taken them out on their boat was almost certainly responsible for their deaths. They surmised that it may well have been the same person who had given them the directions to the motel.
A Break In The Case
By October, 1989, there had been few developments in the Rogers case. Looking through the monthly bulletin put out by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the lead detective on the case, Jim Kappel, saw something that caught his eye.
Back in May, in Madeira Beach, Florida, an similar incident to that of the Rogers had occurred. It involved a 24-year-old Canadian tourist, Judy Blair, on vacation in Florida with her friend, Barbara Mottram. A man had just met invited the two of them out for a boat ride in Tampa Bay to watch the sunset. Judy took him up on his offer, while Barbara refused. While out on the boat, the man raped Judy, but ultimately let her go. The rape had occurred on May 15, 1989, just over two weeks before the murders of the Jo, Michelle and Christe. The man’s boat was blue and white. Whoever raped Judy was still at large.
Jim Kappel, along with another detective, travelled to Canada to interview Judy Blair. Judy told them that she and her friend had met the man, who introduced himself as Dave Posner (or “Posno”, she couldn’t be sure), in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven on the evening of May 14. She described him as being in his mid-30s, white, about 5 foot 10 and 180 pounds, with sandy blond hair. He owned an aluminum company and lived in Bradenton, he told them.
The man was friendly and easy to talk to, and invited the two women to join him for a boat ride the following afternoon. Judy agreed, but Barbara declined. The boat ride was short, but pleasant. Conversation between the two flowed easily. He asked her if she and Barbara would like to join him that evening for a sunset cruise. Judy agreed to go. Barbara once again declined.
The view from the boat that evening was beautiful and Judy snapped several photos, some of which the man appeared in. They were relatively far out in the bay by the time the sun had set. That was when the man’s behavior towards Judy changed. He became aggressive and began touching her inappropriately, telling her that he wanted to have sex. Judy refused.
Terrified, she began screaming and crying. The man told her to shut up, and if she didn’t, he would duct tape her mouth shut. He also threatened to kill her if she did not comply. Pinning her down, he ripped off her top, pulled down her shorts and bikini bottoms, and raped her.
When he finished, he gave her a thermos of water and demanded that she rinse herself off with it. Then he told her to get dressed. He took the film from her camera and threw it overboard. As though things were normal and he had not just violently raped her, he began trying to make conversation. Judy was too stunned to speak.
They were now on their way back to shore. The man threw up over the side of the boat several times. Was he so overcome with guilt that it caused this physical reaction? Detective Kappel wondered.
Once they were close enough to shore, the man ordered Judy off the boat, telling her she could swim the rest of the way. Judy could not get away fast enough, throwing herself overboard and swimming as fast as she could away from her attacker. Unfortunately, due to rinsing herself with the water from the thermos after the rape and swimming to shore, no forensic evidence from the man remained on Judy’s person.
The composite sketch of the suspect drawn using the description provided by Judy Blair (source: Murderpedia)
With Judy’s help, a composite sketch was produced (in the original sketch produced by Madeira Beach police, the man had been wearing a hat, and Detective Kappel wanted one in which the suspect’s entire face and hair could be seen).
Confident that Judy had been attacked by the same man who had killed the Rogers women, the St. Petersburg detectives flew home. Some quick research showed that there was no Dave Posner who lived in Bradenton and owned an aluminum company. The new and improved composite sketch could be seen everywhere one looked; on fliers, in police stations around the state, in newspapers and on the news.
A flood of tips came in as a result of the sketch, so many that detectives struggled to keep up. Disappointingly, none of the tips brought them any closer to their suspect.
A Long-Shot Idea
Once again, what with all the tips that led nowhere, the investigation hit a dead end. Investigators were discouraged, but had no intention of giving up. Going back over the evidence they collected, they had an idea.
The handwritten directions on the Rogers’s Clearwater Beach brochure, according to the forensic document examiner, were very unique. The handwriting was like nothing she had ever seen before. In particular, the letter ‘T’ was capitalized in the middle of words, and the letter ‘y’ was written differently each time (see the letters circled below).
It seemed like a long shot, but if they put the handwriting out there for the public to see, someone might just recognize it. What did they have to lose? The way to get as many pairs of eyes as possible on the handwriting, they figured, was to erect billboards on highways in and around Tampa with the letters blown up large enough for drivers to get a good look.
Five billboards were put up, with the handwritten directions and the question:
WHO WROTE THESE DIRECTIONS? You may know who killed the Rogers family. $25,000 REWARD.
The billboards were eye-catching - they were not just your average advertisement for a casino, personal injury lawyer or McDonalds.
One of the billboards erected around Tampa with the suspect’s handwriting printed on it (source: Youtube)
Then one day, detectives got a call from a local Tampa Bay woman, Jo Ann Steffey, who informed them that she recognized the handwriting as that of an aluminum contractor she had previously hired. His name is Oba Chandler, she told them, and she still had the receipt for the job he had done for her. Their idea actually paid off.
The handwriting on Jo Ann Steffey’s receipt was compared with that on Rogers’ brochure. There was no doubt about it, according to the forensic document examiner, that they were written by the same individual.
Tracking Down The Killer
As it turned out, Oba Chandler lived just a mile from the boat launch where the Rogers’ car had been found. When detectives went to question him, he denied any involvement in the murders. They were, however, able to track down phone records of calls made from boats on the water to the shore; Chandler had called his wife from his boat after the rape of Judy Blair and the Rogers murders. Each time he made up the excuse of having engine trouble as his reason for why he was going to be late home. The calls confirmed that he was out on his boat at the time of both the rape and the murders. On Sept. 24, 1992, Chandler was arrested and taken into custody.
To further build their case against Chandler, detectives flew Judy Blair down from Canada. They showed her a series of mens’ head shots, asking her if she recognized any of them as the man who raped her. Right away, she identified Chandler. To be sure, they showed her a lineup of six men they had in custody. Without hesitation, she pointed to Chandler.
Oba Chandler’s blue and white boat, which he sold when he found out that detectives were onto him (source: Tampa Bay Times)
The next step was to examine Chandler’s boat for evidence. However, when they asked him to take them to it, he told them he had sold it. This only implicated him further - he had gotten rid of it in an attempt to conceal any evidence of the rape or killings.
Detectives needed more to justify charging Chandler for the murders than just his handwriting on the brochure. The brochure was subsequently tested for fingerprints. It had those of Joan Rogers on it, but there was more, in the form of a well-defined palm print that did not belong to any of the Rogers family. Detectives compared it with Chandler’s palm prints. It was a match.
Chandler Goes To Trial
Chandler on his boat (source: Tampa Bay Times)
Chandler’s trial began in the summer of 1994. In his testimony, he said that he had met the Rogers women as they sat in their car, examining a map of the area. He gave them directions to the Days Inn, but did not see them again after that - other than on the news and the billboards.
He acknowledged that yes, he had been out on his boat the night of the murders, but insisted that he was alone. Engine trouble, he said, had been the reason for his calls to shore. He assumed it was a gas leak, and called the Coast Guard and the Marine Patrol, but they were “too busy” to help. In the end, he was able to repair his engine with duct tape and head back to shore.
These all turned out to be lies. There were never any records of Chandler calling the Coast Guard or Marine Patrol. A boat mechanic who testified for the prosecution quashed Chandler’s explanation for his engine trouble and how he fixed it, using technical terms that went beyond what Chandler could explain away. It was evident that he had been caught in several lies.
Judy Blair testified against Chandler, the prosecution highlighting the similarities between what had happened to her and the Rogers at the hands of Chandler, particularly the events leading up to the two incidents. They were all tourists, Chandler had been the first to approach them, he invited them on his boat for a sunset cruise. On the boat, he had threatened to duct tape Judy’s mouth shut (which he had done to the Rogers).
Chandler during his trial (source: Tampa Bay Times)
Something to think about here, is that perhaps it was Barbara’s refusal to go with Judy on Chandler’s boat that saved Judy’s life. Chandler did not kill Judy because he knew that Barbara would be able to easily identify him from when they were talking at the 7-Eleven. It seems highly likely that if Barbara had gone with Judy on the boat ride, the two women may well have met the same fate as the Rogers had.
Sometime in late 1989, around the time that the composite sketch drawn with the help of Judy Blair began circulating in Tampa, Chandler fled to Ohio (where he was from originally). He did not tell anyone where he was going; not even his wife. While in Ohio, he paid a surprise visit to one of his (many) children, Kristal Sue Mays. Kristal would testify during her father’s trial that he had admitted to her and her husband, Rick Mays, that he had raped a woman in Tampa and murdered three others. He told her that the police were looking for him and he was afraid to return to Tampa (I couldn’t find whether Kristal and Rick contacted investigators in Florida about his confession at the time. If they didn’t, it was likely because they felt threatened by Chandler - Kristal was not close with her father, rarely saw him, and was frightened of him).
Chandler Is Sentenced
On Sept. 29, 1994, a jury found Oba Chandler guilty of the murders of Jo, Michelle and Christe Rogers. Each member of the jury voted for the death penalty, and on Nov. 4, the judge sentenced Chandler to death.
The entire time Chandler sat on Florida’s death row, he maintained his innocence, and made multiple appeals. None were granted.
Just over 17 years after Chandler received his death sentence, he was put to death by lethal injection on Nov. 17, 2011. He was 65 years old.
Aftermath of the Murders
Joan, Michelle, and Christe were buried in Willshire, Ohio on June 13, 1989, at Zion Lutheran Cemetery. The tiny farming community was in shock that something so horrific had happened to three of their own. Around 300 family members and friends came to pay their respects and comfort Hal Rogers, who seemed so alone in the world, with his family gone and only the animals on his farm to keep him company.
Hal Rogers on his farm (source: Murderpedia)
Hal Rogers continued farming, but switched his dairy cows for pigs. With his wife and daughters gone, the farm became everything - even more than it had been when they were alive. The work was just what Hal needed to cope - something that occupied him completely. He didn’t have time to sit and feel sorry for himself, but he was never that sort of person anyway. No amount of farming, however, could ever suppress the vivid memories Hal had of Jo, Michelle and Christe. At times they were so strong, it was almost as if they were right there alongside him in the barn, nuzzling the animals and making him laugh.
Michelle Rogers (22 Feb 1972 - 1 June 1989) (source: Youtube)
Christe Rogers (6 Oct 1974 - 1 June 1989) (source: Youtube)
Jo Rogers (12 Nov 1952 - 1 June 1989) (source: Youtube)
In 1998, Hal found love again in Jolene, a Willshire local from another farming family, and the two married. Jolene was also a widow, so she could empathize with Hal to some extent, but could only imagine what it was like to have your family ripped apart by a real life monster, as Hal had.
Hal was happy to have a partner back in his life, someone he could go out for breakfast with and talk about something other than the farm. You can only have the same conversation with pigs so many times, after all.
* * *
I wanted this piece to focus mainly on the murders of Joan, Michelle and Christe Rogers, not specifically on Oba Chandler. There is, however, so much more on Chandler, so I have decided to write a separate piece on him and other crimes (including murder) attributed to him.
Let’s just say, Chandler was one very bad dude. So bad, that the media would label him one of Florida’s most notorious criminals, which is quite a feat, considering it’s Florida we’re talking about!
Sources
True Crime All The Time - Oba Chandler
Angels and Demons by Thomas French - this is a really wonderful account of this entire case. It’s a long form article (so pretty much a book). I highly recommend it if you want to take a deeper dive into this story.
