Oba Chandler

Oba Chandler Jr. (October 11, 1946 – November 15, 2011) was an American mass murderer, rapist, robber, and fraudster who was convicted and executed for the June 1989 murders of the Rogers family, consisting of Joan Rogers and her two teenage daughters Michelle and Christe, whose bodies were found floating in Tampa Bay, Florida, with their hands and feet bound. Autopsies showed the victims had been thrown into the water while still alive, with ropes tied to a concrete block around their necks. The case became high-profile in 1992 when local police posted billboards bearing enlarged images of the suspect's handwriting recovered from a pamphlet in the victims' car. Chandler was identified as the killer when his neighbor and three people that were suing him recognized the handwriting.

Prior to his arrest, Chandler worked as an unlicensed aluminum-siding contractor. Against the advice of his attorneys, he testified in his own defense, saying he had met the victims and had given them directions. Chandler said he never saw them again, except in newspaper coverage and on the billboards set up by authorities. Police originally theorized that two men were involved in the murders, but this was discounted once Chandler was arrested. Following his conviction, Chandler was incarcerated at Union Correctional Institution. During his seventeen years of incarceration until his execution, he did not have any visitors.

Chandler was executed on November 15, 2011. He wrote a last statement to prison officials: "You are killing innocent man today". The statement was read at a post-execution news conference. In February 2014, DNA evidence identified Chandler as the murderer of Ivelisse Berrios-Beguerisse, who was found dead in Coral Springs, Florida, on November 27, 1990.

Early life

Childhood and teenage years Chandler was born on October 11, 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio, as the fourth of five children born to Oba Chandler Sr. and Margaret Johnson. He was known as Junior to his family. Oba Sr. was described as a "full-blood Indian of Cherokee and perhaps Lakota descent", To the children in his second marriage, Oba Sr. was a strict disciplinarian who physically punished his children if they misbehaved or, in the case of his daughters, dressed inappropriately. On May 31, 1957, when Chandler was 10, his father hanged himself in the basement of the family's apartment. According to Chandler's cousin, at the funeral the following day, every time the gravedigger piled dirt on the coffin, Chandler jumped into the open grave and stomped the soil, muttering "He didn't have to do that"; other family members denied the account. After his father's death, Chandler began skipping school and staying out late. He joined a group of neighborhood boys who encouraged him to partake in small criminal acts, such as bicycle theft and shooting BB guns at passing cars.

Chandler remained in Florida, generally staying in and around Orlando, presenting aliases, most commonly "James Thomas Wright", fake occupations, such as X-ray technician, mechanical draftsman, apartment manager, and aluminum contractor, and false home states. Between April 1978 and July 1981, he was arrested three times, twice for loitering and prowling and once for a vending machine theft. In the first offense, which took place in Altamonte Springs, a woman had accused Chandler of spying on her through a window in her bedroom. Chandler was convicted each time and sentenced to monetary fines and according to police, he provided false documentations, including identity cards and Social Security numbers, and even gave a fingerprint sample, which was never matched despite Chandler already having a criminal record. Some of his family members were aware of his fugitive status and false identities, but sheltered him throughout the years. By 1982, Chandler, as "Jim Wright", had settled in Maitland with a girlfriend, running a legitimate aluminum-siding business out of his home. Simultaneously, he ran a counterfeit money operation, producing fake $20 bills.

In May 1982, two teenagers were arrested for attempting to buy tickets using false $20 bills to the 1982 World's Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee. The teenagers told police that a man named "Jim" had given them the money after picking them up as hitchhikers. Following a three-month investigation, the home address of "Jim" was determined and on September 27, 1982, Chandler was arrested by US Secret Service agents as he was driving back home, also discovering $8,340 in fake currency in the trunk of his car. His true identity was discovered during his stay in jail, although Chandler maintained he was a "cypress clockmaker" to a magistrate. He was ultimately found guilty of possessing counterfeit money and sentenced to seven years, which he served at Federal Correctional Institution, Bastrop, a low-security federal prison in Bastrop, Texas, where he obtained a GED and accrued 33 hours in college credit. In June 1984, he was transferred to a federal prison in Florida to serve part of his pre-existing robbery conviction as a consecutive sentence. In Florida, Chandler requested that sentence be reduced to two years' imprisonment and five years' parole and on December 12, 1986, he was released after both of his sentences were deemed as served. There are no police records about Chandler's whereabouts for the next one-and-a-half years, except for a speeding ticket dated January 1, 1988, which placed him in Kentucky. On May 14, 1988, Chandler married Debra Ann Whiteman and in December 1988, the couple moved to Tampa Shores, where they bought a house for a mortgage of $109,800 , paid by Whiteman. The couple had a daughter in February 1989, by which point Chandler had successfully restarted his aluminum-siding venture in Hillsborough County. He also resumed his work as an informant, this time for the Tampa Police Department. It was the first time they had left their home state. Authorities believe Joan became lost on June 1 during the return drive from Orlando to Willshire, and had decided to take an extra vacation day in Tampa. While looking for their hotel they encountered Chandler, who gave them directions and offered to meet them again later to take them on a sunset cruise of Tampa Bay.

Joan and her teenage daughters had left Orlando around 9:00a.m. and checked into the Days Inn on Route 60 at 12:30p.m.

Photographs retrieved from a roll of film found in a camera in the Rogers' hotel room showed Michelle sitting on the floor. The last photograph was taken from the hotel balcony and showed the sun beginning to set over Tampa Bay, confirming that all three family members were alive and had not left their hotel room as the sunset began. They were last seen alive at the hotel's restaurant at around 7:30p.m. It is believed they boarded Chandler's boat by the dock on the Courtney Campbell Causeway—part of Route 60—between 8:30p.m. and 9:00p.m., and that they were dead by 3a.m. the next day. Chandler may have used the fact that he was born in Ohio to lure them into feeling a connection to him. Chandler knew Joan and her daughters were not from Florida because he saw the Ohio license plates on their car.

The victims' bodies were found floating in Tampa Bay on June 4, 1989. The first body was found when several people on board a sailboat crossing under the Sunshine Skyway saw an object in the water. The second body was seen floating off the pier in St. Petersburg, north of the first. While the Coast Guard were recovering the second body, a call about a third, which was seen floating to the east, was received. All three female bodies were found floating face down, bound with a rope around the neck, and naked below the waist.

Autopsies showed all three victims had water in their lungs, proving they had been thrown into the water while still alive. Michelle, who was identified as the second body found, had freed one hand from her bonds before she drowned. The partially dressed state of the three bodies indicated the underlying crime was sexual assault. The bodies, however, bloated as a result of decomposition, and floated to the surface.

Investigation

The Rogers' bodies underwent decomposition while underwater due to hot weather. Because of this, they were not identified for a week after their remains were located.

Joan Rogers and her daughters were not positively identified until a week after their bodies' discovery, by which time Joan's husband, the girls' father, Hal Rogers, had reported them missing in Ohio. On June 8, a housekeeper at the Days Inn said the Rogers family's room had not been disturbed and the beds had not been slept in. The hotel manager contacted the police. Marine researchers at the University of South Florida estimated from currents and patterns that the victims were thrown from a boatand not from a bridge or dry landbetween two and five days before they were found. The Rogers' car, a 1986 Oldsmobile Calais with Ohio license plates, was found at the boat dock by the Courtney Campbell Causeway.

At the same time, Chandler experienced significant financial troubles, first with the IRS for a $2,615 debt in unpaid back taxes from 1988, which was followed by a lien due to failed utility payments. Chandler obtained a state permit for his aluminum siding business in April 1990, but in July of the same year, Chandler and his wife stopped making house payments for their Tampa Shores residence, moving out the following month without notifiying their bank. Chandler lied to neighbors by claiming he was relocating to $340,000 home in Indian Rocks Beach. The bank initiated foreclosure proceedings on the Tampa property in December 1990 and upon its resale in 1992, it was found that the house had been emptied of furniture, and the pool left filled and uncleaned. In 1991, after briefly staying in Sunrise, the couple rented a $66,000 apartment in Port Orange, where Chandler went back to using his birth name. Chandler mostly presented himself as an unemployed hobby fisherman, but also claimed to own a pool screen enclosure company and was often hired by neighbors to build aluminum siding to their houses. He also frequently bought boats and cars from neighbors, only to resell them shortly after purchase. During this time, Chandler had convinced his nephew-in-law, 51-year-old John Martin, to smuggle marijuana grown by Chandler at his house. Martin eventually sought to sell some of the drugs to his boss, 40-year-old Steve Segura, who sought pain relief from glaucoma. Chandler arranged a meeting with a seller for of marijuana, really a police-run sting operation, in Chandler's vehicle at a WestShore Plaza parking lot. Martin and Segura were arrested, the former carrying a scale and the latter carrying two concealed handguns, as well as $6,000 carried by both in total. Martin was sentenced to one year of probation, an $85 fine and 20 hours of community service, while Segura received five years of probation, a $1,000 fine and 500 hours of community service.

On September 11, 1992, Chandler robbed two jewelry manufacturers at gunpoint in their motel room in Pinellas Park. The men, who had come from California for a jewelry show, had both their merchandise and company car stolen. Chandler had driven to the location with his wife Debra and daughter, who stayed behind to read a book to their daughter. Chandler drove up to Debra in the stolen car, with both travelling to a different motel, where Chandler left the stolen vehicle, taking three cases back to their home. It was never established whether Debra was aware of the crime, though she admitted to the finding the circumstances suspicious and accepting a portion of the jewelry, which had been melted down to pure gold, while her husband left on a purported business trip, from which he did not return. The value of the stolen jewelry was initially estimated at $140,000 , but later described as having a worth of $750,000 .

Chandler, who had since been tied to the motel robbery, was arrested on September 24, 1992 and charged with murder, rape, armed robbery, and felony possession of a firearm. His handwritten directions on a brochure found in the Rogers' vehicle and a description of his boat written by Jo Rogers on the brochure were the primary clues that led to his being named a suspect. Local police posted images of Chandler's handwriting on the brochure on billboards in the Tampa Bay area, leading to a call from a former neighbor who provided a copy of a work order Chandler had written. This use of billboards by law enforcement in the US was unusual at the time.

Through handwriting analysis, the two samples were matched. Police reported that Chandler and his then-wife moved from their home on Dalton Avenue in Tampa to Port Orange near Daytona Beach. This theory was dismissed when Chandler was arrested. No evidence of a second manother than a former prison cellmate's claim that Chandler said another man, whose identity the cellmate claimed to know but would not revealhas ever surfaced. The second-suspect theory was belied by Chandler's approach of two Canadian female touriststhat he was willing to approach multiple potential targets by himself.

Hal Rogers' brother John was also considered a suspect, even though he was serving a prison sentence for the rape of a woman at the time of the murders. Hal later said he had promised the family he would post bail and would not renege on his promise. He acknowledged he was in Tampa Bay that nightthe police had evidence of three ship-to-shore telephone calls made from his boat to his home during the time frame of the murdersbut Chandler maintained he was fishing alone. He said he had returned home late because his engine would not start, which he attributed to a gas line leak.

There were, however, no records of distress calls from Chandler to either the Coast Guard or the Marine Patrol that night, nor were there any Coast Guard boats on the bay the following morning that could have helped him.

Witnesses On May 15, 1989, two weeks before the Rogers murders, Chandler raped Judy Blair aboard his private boat. Blair, who was visiting the US as a tourist from Ontario with her friend Barbara Mottram, had met Chandler at a convenience store in Tampa the prior day. Using the name Dave Posner (or Posno), Chandler invited the women to a boat tour, which both had initially agreed to. The following morning, Mottram declined the offer on short notice, after which Chandler and Blair set off from Madeira Beach, spending most of the day sailing without incident. Upon returning to the docks, Chandler attempted to convince Blair to persuade Mottram into joining them for a second trip for dinner. When Blair stated that this would not be possible, Chandler "ticked off" and sailed the boat to the Gulf of Mexico, where Chandler raped Blair before returning her to shore. A day later, Blair told Mottram of the rape and reported the crime to police. During the 1992 trial, Blair identified Chandler from a collection of photos and a lineup.

Blair and Mottram remembered that Chandler had stated that he was in the aluminum-siding contracting business, which later helped lead investigators to him. It also inspired the name of the investigation; "Operation Tin Man". The facial composite produced from Blair's description was posted on the billboards along with the handwriting samples.

A former employee of Chandler's testified that he bragged about dating three women on the bay on the night of the murders, and that the next morning he arrived by boat and delivered materials for a job and immediately set out again. In an attempt to establish Chandler's whereabouts on that night, investigators found records of several ship-to-shore telephone calls made from his boat to his home between 1:00a.m. and 5:00a.m., which may have been attempts to explain his absence to his wife and to provide himself with an alibi for the time of the murders. Chandler's daughter Kristal Sue Mays testified that her father had told her the police were looking for him because he "killed some women" and that he was afraid to return to Tampa; her husband Rick testified that he did not recall if Chandler had actually confessed to the murders, but did remember that Chandler admitted to raping women in the Madeira Beach area, and that he had said one of them "got away". Another of Chandler's daughters, Valerie Troxell, testified that he had admitted to raping a woman two weeks before the murders. Numerous police officers were present to keep reporters and television crews out of the church during the service. He maintained his innocence and continued to pursue legal appeals while on Florida's death row. He admitted to the Madeira Beach incident but said the sex was consensual and that the victim had changed her mind during the act. Because Chandler had already been sentenced to death for the Rogers murders and because prosecutors did not want to subject Blair to the emotional trauma of a rape trial, he was never prosecuted for her rape. Shortly after the trial and conviction, his wife Debra filed for divorce and their marriage was dissolved a year later. Chandler was no longer allowed to see his daughter Whitney and in accordance with his ex-wife's wishes, he was not allowed to see later photographs of her. In July 2008, Chandler was on Florida's short list of executions.

Profiling experts speculated Chandler may have killed previously, based on the belief that a first-time killer would not be experienced or bold enough to abduct and kill three women at once. Chandler remained a suspect in the 1982 murder of a woman whose body was found floating off Anna Maria Island until 2011, when the body was identified as 29-year-old Amy Hurst and her husband William was arrested and charged with her murder, and was sentenced to life in prison on April 4, 2011. Chandler was never charged with another murder. All of his appeals of his 1994 conviction were denied; his last was in May 2007.

After his conviction, Chandler was named by media as one of Florida's most notorious criminals. He said his last words before his execution would be, "Kiss my rosy red ass". In May 2011, comparisons were drawn between Chandler's case and trial in 1994, and the murder case of Caylee Anthony. In both cases, heightened media attention forced the selection of jurors who lived outside the county where the crime had been committed. One of the jurors in Chandler's 1994 trial said, "He scared some of the jurors when he would sit there and stare at you and have that stupid grin on his face. He would make your skin crawl."

Judge Susan F. Schaeffer, who presided over the 1994 trial and ultimately sentenced Chandler described him in a 2011 interview as "a man with no soul." She said, "It's the worst case as far as factually, and as far as a defendant without saving grace, that I ever handled, and I represented plenty of people who were not necessarily good people."

Execution

On October 10, 2011, Governor Rick Scott signed Chandler's death warrant. His execution was set for November 15, 2011, at 4:00p.m. His lawyer Baya Harrison said Chandler asked him not to file any frivolous appeals to keep him alive. Harrison said: He is not putting a lot of pressure on me to go running around at the end to find some magic way out. He is not going to make a scene. He's not going to bemoan the legal system. What he has told me is this: if there is some legal way that I can find to try to prevent him from being executed, he would like me to do what I reasonably can. Harrison also said Chandler suffered from high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, problems with his kidneys, and arthritis.

On October 12, 2011, Harrison said although he was preparing to file a motion regarding the violation of his client's Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights in the case, he was unsure whether Chandler was willing to travel to Clearwater for the court hearing or would agree to the filing of the motion. "He hates coming down to Clearwater. He doesn't like the ride and he's not well", Harrison said. On October 18, Harrison filed a motion against the execution on grounds that the way Florida imposes the death penalty is unconstitutional. A jury may recommend a life sentence or a death sentence, but under Florida law, the judge makes the final decision. A hearing on Chandler's motion was set for October 21 at 1:00pm; Chandler did not attend. On October 24, Chandler's appeal was rejected because he had already filed an appeal to the Florida Supreme Court prior to the decision. Although the Florida Supreme Court initially scheduled Chandler's appeal to be heard on November 9, 2011, they later cancelled oral argument. On November 7, 2011, the Florida Supreme Court denied Chandler's appeal of his death sentences and death warrant. The Florida Supreme Court had upheld Chandler's death sentence in 1997 and 2003.

On November 15 at 4:08pm Chandler was executed by lethal injection at Florida State Prison in Raiford. Chandler declined to make a last statement before being executed but left a written statement with prison officials: "You are killing a (sic) innocent man today." Shortly after signing Chandler's death warrant, Governor Scott said; "[Chandler] killed three women, so I looked through different cases, and it made sense to do that one. There's never one thing. It was the right case."

Chandler's daughter Valerie Troxell said in an interview after the execution; "I believe they did execute an innocent man. I don't think my father alone could have pulled off such a heinous crime. It would have to have been more than one person... The palm print would prove he did meet them and gave them directions, but it didn't mean he killed them. I think the prosecution had a very weak case." Another of Chandler's daughters, Suzette, said her father was a monster who got what he deserved.

Later linked crimes In July 1993, while Chandler's murder trial was still ongoing, it was revealed that Chandler was also considered a suspect to several additional sex crimes, which all took place between 1963 and 1991. They consisted of a 1963 rape in Pinellas Park, a 1964 statutory rape in Cincinnati, in which charges were dropped, a 1965 attempted rape, also in Cincinnati, a 1973 rape in Daytona Beach, a 1990 rape in Pasco County, Florida and the 1991 abduction and molestation of a 15-year-old girl in Daytona Beach. The Pinellas Park and Daytona Beach rapes were initially unreported and in the latter of these, the victim stated that she had a photo of the perpetrator, whom she identified as Chandler. Additionally, there had been another alleged incident related to Chandler and his boat at Hudson Beach in April 1989, when two men, one of whom introduced himself as "Mr. Wright", invited two women to a trip to the Gulf of Mexico on a boat that matched the description of Chandler's Bayliner. "Mr. Wright" sailed both women out to sea to "get better acquainted" but returned them to shore when they claimed that a friend was waiting for them.

Murder of Ivelisse Berrios-Beguerisse On February 25, 2014, investigators revealed that DNA evidence identified Chandler as the murderer of 20-year-old Ivelisse Berrios-Beguerisse, who was raped and strangled in Coral Springs, Florida, on November 27, 1990.

Berrios-Beguerisse, a 20-year-old newlywed resident of Davie, Florida, was last seen at Sawgrass Mills Mall where she worked at a sporting goods store. When she did not return home, her husband went to the mall and found her car, a 1985 Ford Tempo, with the tires slashed. It is believed Chandler, after watching the victim for two days, slashed the tires, arrived in the guise of a helpful stranger, and offered to help. Three hours after she was reported missing, her body was found under a residential mailbox in a local neighborhood by two men returning from a fishing trip. Berrios-Beguerisse's body was naked and had ligature marks on both wrists and legs, and brown tape stuck to her hair.

Chandler, who lived in Sunrise at the time of the murder, had lived less than from Berrios-Beguerisse's workplace at the Sunrise Mall and moved from the apartment he had there two or three days after the murder.

Media coverage The Discovery Channel devoted a one-hour episode of its series Scene of the Crime, titled "The Tin Man," to the murder of the Rogers family. In 1997, a series of articles titled "Angels & Demons," written by Thomas French which told the story of the murders, the capture and conviction of Chandler, and the impact of the crimes on the Rogers' family and their community in Ohio was published in the St. Petersburg Times. The series won a 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. The 2000 book Bodies in the Bay by Mason Ramsey is a fictionalized adaptation of the Chandler case.

The case was featured in a 1999 episode of Cold Case Files on A&E titled "Bodies in the Bay," which also focused on the evidence in the case.

In 1995, Chandler, some members of his family, and Hal Rogers appeared in an episode of the Maury Povich Show featuring the case. Chandler appeared via satellite link. In August 2014, the ID series Murder in Paradise covered the case.

On February 11, 2022, the Oxygen Channel aired an episode of Family Massacre called "The Rogers Family".

On November 19, 2022, the true crime podcast Casefile detailed the case of Jo, Michelle & Christe Rogers.