Richard W. Rogers
Arrested Again
Thanks to this similar MO and the physical evidence, on May 27, 2001, Rogers was arrested and charged with the murder and dismemberment of the two victims found in New Jersey: the July 1992 murder of Thomas Mulcahy, 57, a married bisexual business executive from Sudbury, Massachusetts, and the May 1993 killing of gay prostitute Anthony Marrero, 44, from Manhattan. State workers emptying trash cans in a rest area found parts of Mulcahy. For evidence, the police have fingerprints from the bags, carpet fibers that are similar to carpets in Rogers' home, and bite mark evidence for the Mulcahy murder. The gloves found on him had been purchased on Staten Island where Rogers resided, and two fingerprints and a palm print matching Rogers were lifted from the bags wrapping Marrero's parts.
Rogers remains a suspect in three other murders, with evidence announced in January 2004 about two of them: Peter S. Anderson 54, a gay investment banker whose parts were discovered in 1991 in a rest area on the PA turnpike showed eighteen of Rogers fingerprints on the bags that wrapped his remains; Michael Sakara, 55, a New York law journal typesetter whose parts were found in two separate locations along a rural New York highway 1993 was last seen at a gay bar and was seen with Rogers. In addition, another man, Matthew Pierro, who was last seen in 1982 in a bar in Orlando, FL and was also found stabbed and viciously cut. Rogers was in Florida at the time.
In his opening address, covered by the Newark Star Ledger, defense attorney David Ruhnke indicated that Rogers is innocent, and that his fingerprints on bags indicated only that he had carried something in them at some point in time. Other people's fingerprints had been found as well. "Maybe," he said, "they don't have the right guy."
William Heisler, the Assistant Prosecutor and chief trial attorney for Ocean County, indicated that the state could prove its case against Rogers beyond a reasonable doubt.