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A mother and her two teenage daughters pack up the family car to head out on a week-long vacation to the sunny state of Florida, a vacation that the family's been dreaming about for months. The beaches of Florida offered the family so many new and exciting experiences, including a sunset boat cruise around the beautiful Tampa Bay with a perfectly nice stranger.
The family heads out on the sunset boat cruise, but never returns. Three bodies floated to the water's surface throughout Tampa Bay. Their bodies tied to concrete blocks. Who was responsible for their murders? And who was that perfectly nice stranger who offered to take the family out on his boat that night?
This week on Forensic Tales, we cover the complete story of Oba Chandler. ♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. As always, I'm your host, Courtney. Each Monday, we release a new episode that discusses real, bone-chilling true crime stories and how forensic science has been used in the case.
Some cases have been solved through cutting-edge forensic techniques, while other cases have been left sitting on the shelf collecting dust in the cold case division, just waiting to be solved by forensic science. If you love the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.
Also, if one episode a week is just not enough to satisfy your true crime obsession, you can now access bonus episodes and be the first one to listen to new episodes of Forensic Tales on our Patreon page at patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. Patreon is also where you can go to simply support the show.
I want to personally welcome this week's newest Patreon, Robin Adams. You rock. Every little bit helps, and I couldn't do this without you. Now, let's get to our story. In May 1989, 36-year-old Joan Rogers thought it would be a good idea to take some much-needed time off and go on a family vacation, something that I think we all need a little bit more of.
So Joan decided to take her two teenage daughters, 17-year-old Michelle and 14-year-old Christy, on a vacation down to the sunny state of Florida, while her husband, Hal Rogers, stayed behind to run the family dairy farm.
The Rogers family is from Wilshire, a tiny town in Ohio. And when I say tiny, I mean like the population is literally less than 400 people. So for Joan and her two daughters to take a vacation to somewhere like Florida must have been super exciting and just a huge change of scenery for them.
And even more exciting for the Rogers was that this would be the very first time the family has ever left the state of Ohio. So on May 26, 1989, Joan Rogers and her two daughters left Ohio to head down to Florida for their week-long vacation, while Hal Rogers stayed behind to work on the family's dairy farm.
By all accounts, Joan and her young teenage daughters have an absolutely amazing time in Orlando, Florida. This being the family's first time ever leaving the state of Ohio, made it even more special to spend some time away from the dairy farm and just get to relax underneath the Florida sun. After an incredible and relaxing vacation in Orlando, Joan and her daughters start to make their way back home to Ohio.
But on June 1st, the family gets a little turned around, and instead of heading back to Ohio from Orlando, they actually ended up in Tampa Bay, Florida, which didn't turn out to be so bad after all, because they thought, hey, why not stay an extra day on vacation in Tampa Bay?
And that's what Joan and her daughters decided to do. Now, if I was forced to stay an extra night on vacation, especially in a place like Tampa Bay, Florida, I don't think I'd be complaining too much. So Joan and her two daughters started to look for a place to stay the night in Tampa Bay. Since this wasn't a part of their original vacation plan, they needed to find a hotel to stay the night in.
And while Joan filled up her car with gasoline at a local gas station, she met a guy that was able to give them directions to a local hotel. So the man wrote down the directions to the hotel on a brochure and handed it back to Joan. And during their conversation, the man told Joan about how he operates a boat company that provides sunset boat rides in Tampa Bay.
The man offered Joan to take her and her daughters out on the boat that night if they were interested. Joan was a little hesitant because she had never been on a boat before. And plus, her and her daughters didn't even know how to swim.
But Joan's daughters, Michelle and Christy, were so excited about having the chance to go on a boat cruise at sunset, and they convinced their mom to take up the man's offer. So Joan pulled out a notepad and wrote down the directions to the boat launch ramp and even made a note about what color the boat is, blue and white, to help identify where they can meet the man later that night.
Joan and her daughters drove away from the gas station and checked in to the Days Inn Hotel at Route 60 in Tampa Bay, Florida, around 12.30 p.m. that afternoon. The family just hangs around the motel for most of the time, really looking forward to their sunset boat cruise around the bay, something that the family has never done before.
Joan, Michelle, and Christy head down to the hotel restaurant for dinner and head out around 7.30 p.m. for the boat cruise. This would be the last time anyone ever saw the family alive. On June 4, 1989, Tampa Bay police discovered the bodies of three women floating in the bay.
The first body was discovered when several people on board a sailboat crossed under the Sunshine Skyway and saw an object floating in the water. The second body was discovered floating off the pier in St. Petersburg, about two miles away from the first body.
While the Coast Guard was still recovering the second body from the water, they receive a call that a third body has been discovered about 200 yards east of the second body. The bodies were tied up, their mouths taped shut, and they were naked from the waist down. They were bound with yellow rope, and their bodies had been tied to a 30-pound concrete block.
Police had no idea who these three women were or how their bodies ended up floating in the bay. They had no IDs on them, no wallet, nothing to identify who they were or where they came from. The bodies were so badly decomposed that even though they were tied to 30-pound concrete blocks, the time they spent in the water had actually allowed the bodies and the blocks to rise to the surface of the water.
The medical examiner was able to determine that the bodies had been in the water for at least three days before they rose to the surface. They needed to figure out exactly where the bodies were dumped into the water to get a better understanding of what might have happened to them.
Marine researchers from the University of Florida analyzed the water currents over the last week and concluded that the three bodies must have been thrown in the water at the center of the bay, which would rule out the possibility that they were thrown off a bridge or tossed from dry land.
Because the three bodies had spent over three days in the warm Tampa Bay waters, it made it nearly impossible for the medical examiner to identify the bodies. And again, they didn't have any belongings with them. No wallets, no IDs, nothing. So the police call on the local media to get the word out about the three bodies. And the police get a hit much quicker than they thought they would.
The manager at a local hotel saw the news report on the discovery of three female bodies in the bay and decided to give the police a call. The hotel manager tells the police that a woman and her two teenage daughters checked into the hotel three days earlier, but they haven't been seen since. Police head over to the hotel and are really disturbed by what they see.
Inside the hotel room, they discovered all of the women's belongings. Their beds were perfectly made. Nothing seemed to be out of place. It's as if whoever was in the room simply vanished and never returned. Police checked with the hotel manager and learned that the room was registered to Joan Rogers and her two daughters.
So they decide to call Joan's husband, Hal Rogers, to see if he has any idea where his wife and two daughters are. And when they talk to Hal, they learn that Joan, Michelle, and Christy left Ohio over a week and a half ago for a vacation to Florida.
So police ask Hal, well, why was your wife Joan and two young daughters on their vacation all these miles away in Florida without you? That seems a little odd for a man to just have his wife go on a week-long vacation with their two young daughters without him.
So Hal tells the police that he couldn't go on vacation with his family because he had to stay in Ohio to make sure that work got done around the family dairy farm. So then police ask Hal, well, when was your family supposed to return home from their trip? And Hal is like, they were supposed to be home over three days ago.
Now, by this point, police ask Hal, okay, your entire family was supposed to be home from vacation over three days ago. Why haven't you contacted the police or try to find out where they are? And Hal's response is really just, well, it's odd. Hal tells police that he really didn't have time to worry about where his family was.
that he basically had all of this work to do around the family farm, which is why he couldn't call the police, which is just totally bizarre to me. Now, I would like to think that if I wasn't home within like one hour of when I was supposed to be, that my fiance would be calling every person in every police department known to mankind to try and find where I was.
But nope, that's not what Hal Rogers does. His wife and two teenage daughters aren't back from vacation, and he's just like, oh, well, I've got work to do on the farm. Sorry. Now, I'm not the only one who finds Hal's behavior just weird and bizarre.
The police also share the same suspicions as I do. And to them, Hal just seems cold and not even the slightest bit emotional about the fact his wife and daughters are missing. So they start looking into Hal and his whereabouts over the last couple days. But we learn that Hal, well, Hal never left his small town in Ohio.
Hal Rogers was spotted by a number of different people at a local restaurant for basically the whole day. He went to that restaurant for breakfast, lunch, and dinner pretty much every single day while Joan and their daughters were in Florida.
And I guess it was lucky for police that the man didn't know how to cook and he basically had to eat every meal at a restaurant, which established a pretty airtight alibi with a ton of eyewitnesses. So as odd as Hal Rogers' behavior was, police had to clear him as a possible suspect or person of interest in Joan, Michelle, and Christy's disappearance.
Soon after the discovery of the three female bodies floating in the Tampa Bay waters, the bodies were identified through dental records as 36-year-old Joan Rogers, 17-year-old Michelle Rogers, and 14-year-old Christy Rogers, confirming everyone's worst nightmares. The autopsy also revealed a lot of other disturbing facts about Joan, Michelle, and Christy's murders.
The medical examiner found water in their lungs, meaning that the three women were very much alive when their bodies were dumped in the water. The medical examiner also noted that although their mouths were gagged and shut, their eyes were left wide open, leaving the possibility that whoever did this to them wanted the women to see exactly what was happening to them and each other.
Because the bodies had been in the warm Tampa Bay waters for so long, this really eliminated a lot of valuable forensic evidence from the bodies, like fingerprints, trace evidence, fibers, really anything that could help investigators figure out who did this. Their time in the water even eliminated the ability to determine if Joan and her daughters had been sexually assaulted or not before their deaths.
Because remember, their bodies were found naked from the waist down.
A few days after the autopsy and identification of Joan, Michelle, and Christy Rogers, police investigators find Joan's 1984 Oldsmobile with Ohio license plates parked at the boat ramp by the Courtney Campbell Causeway, less than one mile away from the family's hotel room, and only 25 miles away from where the bodies were discovered floating in the bay.
Inside Joan's car, police found two handwritten notes, one that had directions to the hotel that they were staying at, and the other note with directions to the boat launch ramp where the family's car was parked. Thinking that the notes might provide some valuable information as to what happened to the family, police sent the notes off to the crime lab to have a forensic document examiner look over them.
The forensic document examiner determined that it was Joan's handwriting on the note that had the directions to the boat launch with the note of the blue and white boat. But the directions that were written on the brochure found in Joan's car, well, the handwriting didn't belong to Joan on this document, meaning someone else wrote the directions. But the next question police were asking was who?
The forensic document examiner noticed that the handwriting on the brochure had some pretty unique characteristics to it. The examiner noticed how the letter T was capitalized in the middle of words and how the letter Y appeared to be written in a very different style each and every time it was written.
Police know that they need to find who wrote the directions on the brochure, and they need to find them quickly. Besides the directions to the boat launch ramp, the words BLUE W SLASH WHT were written down on the notepad. Police were wondering if this could be the color of the boat that was used to take Joan and her daughters out on the Sunset Cruise.
So police searched everywhere at the boat launch ramp where Joan and her daughters went that evening. But they ran into a pretty big problem here. Anyone could park their boats at the boat ramp, leaving their suspect pool wide open to anyone with a blue and white boat, which turns out was quite a lot of people in the Tampa Bay area.
But just as investigators were feeling a little overwhelmed, they received a tip about a local man who was running an unlicensed boat business offering sunset cruises in Tampa Bay. And the tip led them to a man named Jason Wilcox. Well, it turns out that Jason Wilcox does have a blue and white boat.
Bingo! Police may have just found their very first suspect in the murders of Joan Rogers and her two daughters. Police ran a background check on Jason Wilcox and discovered some not-so-pretty things about him. It turns out Jason Wilcox isn't exactly what you would describe as a straight-up citizen.
Jason Wilcox had an extensive criminal record, including a case of aggravated assault. Wilcox lived only five miles away from the boat launch that Jones' car was parked, and if things couldn't look any worse for the guy, he had the same exact type of concrete blocks that were used to tie down the bodies on his property.
Now, things just aren't looking so good for Jason Wilcox. So police investigators sat down and talked with Jason. And right away, he denied having any involvement in the murders. Police wanted to compare Jason Wilcox's handwriting to the handwriting on the brochure with the directions.
but they really didn't have any evidence or probable cause linking Wilcox to the murders in order to get a warrant for a handwriting sample. So police had to turn their attention to finding another possible suspect.
Police investigators learn that just two weeks before the murders of Joan and her daughters, 24-year-old Canadian tourist Judy Blair was visiting the Tampa Bay area and took a sunset boat cruise with a man who had a blue and white boat. Once Judy is on the boat with the man, the man attacked her and said that if she didn't have sex with him that he would kill her.
He told the woman to not to bother trying to swim to shore because the water was filled with sharks. Judy Blair was brutally raped by this man. And according to Blair, after the rape, the man did something kind of unusual. He became physically ill, like he threw up over the side of the boat after the rape.
which is pretty unusual behavior and is possibly a sign that he was personally and deeply disgusted with his own actions. So the man waited until it was completely dark in the middle of the night to return Judy back to the shore, where she was basically allowed to get off the boat, and luckily she wasn't killed in the attack.
After hearing this story of the sexual assault on Judy Blair, which just so happened to have also been on a blue and white boat, homicide investigators were wondering, was this the same man who also killed the Rogers family?
Terrible news for the police investigators that the Canadian tourist who was sexually assaulted on the boat took a shower before reporting the assault to the police. So they were unable to get any valuable forensic evidence from her body. But Judy was able to provide the police some pretty useful information about her attacker. She was able to provide them a physical description of what he looked like.
so that the police could get a sketch of the individual out to the media. So, remember Jason Wilcox, the local man who was tipped off to police for running an unlicensed boat business, who just so happened to also offer Sunset Cruises.
Well, Jason Wilcox looked nothing like the sketch provided by the tourist. And by this point, Jason Wilcox was even willing to take a polygraph test proving that he had nothing to do with the murder of the Rogers family. And guys, well, he passed. Jason Wilcox was not the man responsible for killing Joan and her two daughters.
So if Jason Wilcox was officially ruled out as a possible suspect, who was the man police were searching for? The sketch provided by the Canadian tourist prompted hundreds of leads to come into the Tampa Bay Police Department. And officers followed up on each and every single one of them in hopes of finding their suspect.
But after following up on lead, after lead, after lead, police still had zero suspects or persons of interest and nearly three years would go by in the case. Homicide investigators decided that it's time to get a little creative.
that what they're doing so far in the investigation, it's just not working. So they decided, why not use area billboards, you know the ones you see while driving on the freeway, to post the killer's handwriting sample from the brochure found inside of Joan's car.
So, the billboard posted a sample of the handwriting and asked the public to call the Tampa Bay Police Department if they believed they knew who the handwriting sample belonged to. And just maybe by posting the handwriting sample on the billboard, someone passing might just recognize who that person is.
And I know this tactic sounds pretty crazy and out there to me, but they really had no other leads to go off of. So hey, it's worth a shot.
A few weeks later, a lady by the name of Joanne Steffi saw the billboard while out driving the highway. And as she drove past the billboard, she thought, wow, that handwriting looks super familiar. I think I know whose handwriting that is. So Joanne Steffi called up the Tampa Bay Police Department and said she thinks she knows whose handwriting that is on the billboard.
She identifies the man as Oba Chandler, a contractor she hired to do some work on her house. She told police that Oba Chandler seemed like a pretty shady guy right from the beginning, and after just a few jobs, she decided to part ways with him. Joanne provided police a receipt for work that Chandler had done for her that had his handwriting on it.
Chandler's receipt was compared to the handwriting on the note found in Joan Rogers' car, and it was an exact match. The capital letter T was exactly the same, and all the variations of the letter Y were exactly the same. Police now had their prime suspect in the murder of Joan and her two daughters.
Oba Chandler was a 43-year-old man who owned a local unlicensed aluminum construction business with a pretty traumatic past. When Oba was only 10 years old, his father hung himself in the basement in his family's apartment. And when police run a background check on Chandler, they discovered that he had a pretty extensive criminal record dating back to his teenage years.
Chandler had a number of arrests, including two incidents of sexual assault. In fact, in one incident, Chandler broke into a Florida couple's home, held them at gunpoint, and robbed them. So again, not exactly your all-American stand-up guy.
Oba Chandler fathered 13 children with 12 different women over the years. I don't even know how that's possible, but hey, this guy managed to do it. And police learned that Oba Chandler only lived about a half mile from the boat ramp where Joan's car was found.
Believing that they finally have their guy, police pull up the ship-to-shore records to see where Chandler's boat was on the night of the murders. And well, turns out, Oba Chandler was on the water the day that the Canadian tourist was raped and the day the Rogers family was killed.
Oba Chandler was arrested on September 24, 1992 for the murders of Joan and her daughters Michelle and Christy. Although they had already identified the handwriting on the directions found in Joan's car, police wanted to build a stronger case to bring to trial. So police bring in the Canadian tourist who survived the sexual assault to identify Chandler as her attacker from a photo lineup.
Right away, the tourist points Chandler out as the man who assaulted her. But police wanted to be 100% sure Oba Chandler was their man. So they placed Chandler in an in-person lineup with several other guys. And once again, the tourist immediately pointed out Chandler.
While in custody, investigators wanted to search Chandler's boat for any possible evidence leading back to the murders. But when investigators show up to the boat ramp, they find out that Chandler had already sold the boat. I mean, if that's not suspicious, then I don't know what is. So police investigators know that they're going to need more forensic evidence than just the handwriting sample to get a murder conviction.
A forensic document examiner was already convinced that the handwriting on Joan's brochure found in her car belonged to Oba Chandler. But what else could they find on the brochure to secure a murder conviction? Forensic scientists took the brochure and processed it with ninhydrin, a chemical used to lift fingerprints off basically any surface.
When anhydrine is applied to a surface believed to contain fingerprints, the anhydrine reacts with the amino acids that are present in fingertip residue, causing the fingerprints to appear purple on the surface. And once the fingerprints turn purple, they can be photographed and compared.
And when scientists sprayed the brochure with ninhydrin, they discovered a lot of fingerprints, including a very clear impression of a right palm print. The fingerprints and palm print obtained from the brochure were compared to Oba Chandler's prints. And well, let's just say they came back to be a perfect match.
Oba Chandler was officially charged with the murder of Joan Rogers and her daughters Michelle and Christy. Prosecutors and police believed that Oba Chandler was the man who met Joan and her daughters at the gas station, knowing that they were from out of town based on the Ohio license plate, and offered to give them a sunset cruise on his boat.
And once on the boat, prosecutors believed that he may have sexually assaulted the women, tied them to concrete blocks, and threw them off the boat while all three were still very much alive. Oba Chandler took the stand at trial in his own defense and said that he met Joan and his daughters at the gas station. And yeah, he said he did give them directions, but that was it.
He claimed that he never gave them a ride on his boat, and in fact, he never saw them ever again until the news broke about the murders. When prosecutors questioned him about the ship-to-shore records proving that he was out on the Tampa Bay that night, Chandler admitted that he was out on the water that night.
But he was out there fishing alone, something that he did quite often. And again, insisting that he never took the Rogers family out on his boat. Prosecutors knew that Chandler made three separate ship-to-shore phone calls from his boat to his house the night of the murders. But Chandler claimed that he called home to let his wife know that he would be a little late because he was having engine problems on the boat.
He also said that he called the Coast Guard and the Florida Marine Patrol, but apparently both were too busy to help him out. But, interestingly enough, neither the Coast Guard or the Florida Marine Patrol had any records of receiving a distress call from Chandler's boat. Records of Chandler's boat also revealed that the boat didn't have any reported engine problems, as Chandler claimed.
Judy Blair, the Canadian tourist who had been sexually assaulted by Chandler, also testified at his murder trial. Blair basically testified to the similarities between her attack and the attack on Joan and her daughters, although he was never formally charged with her rape.
After the jury deliberated for a few hours, they came back with a guilty verdict on November 4, 1994 for the murders of Joan, Michelle, and Christy Rogers. Oba Chandler was sentenced to death for the murders and was sent to Florida's death row. Although the forensic evidence was overwhelming in this case, Chandler maintained his innocence even on death row.
On October 10, 2011, Florida Governor Rick Scott signed the death warrant and Oba Chandler's execution was scheduled for November 15, 2011 at 4 p.m. And as anticipated, Oba Chandler was executed on November 15th.
Although he didn't have any reported last words at his execution, he did leave behind a note in his cell that read, quote, you are killing an innocent man today, end quote. What happened to Joan Rogers and her daughters, Michelle and Christy, is nothing short of a complete tragedy.
How could a family who was on vacation, leaving their home state for the very first time, be murdered in such a callous and brutal way? It's unspeakable what Joan and her daughters went through on that June night in 1989 at the hands of Oba Chandler.
Fingerprints and handwriting samples led police investigators right to the killer. And Oba Chandler left behind an electronic trail linking him to the murders that no one could ignore. Without forensic science, it's possible that Oba Chandler would have gotten away with a triple murder. ♪
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Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.
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