Charles Rogers (murder suspect)

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.

Described as "reclusive", 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.

Charles Frederick Rogers (December 30, 1921 – 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".

Charles Rogers enrolled at Texas A&M University in 1942, but later dropped out.

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.

After the war, he worked as a seismologist for Shell Oil for nine years.

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.

He abruptly quit his job in 1957 without giving an explanation.

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.

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.

One officer opened the refrigerator and found what appeared to be numerous cuts of washed, unwrapped meat neatly stacked on the shelves.

The officer later recalled that he thought the meat was that of a butchered hog.

As the officer was closing the door, he noticed two human heads visible through the clear glass of the vegetable bin.

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.

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.

Police determined that Fred and Edwina Rogers had been killed on June 20, Father's Day.

An autopsy showed that Fred was bludgeoned to death with a claw hammer.

His eyes had been gouged out and his genitalia were removed.

Edwina had been beaten and shot, execution style, in the head.

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.

What little blood was found led to Charles' bedroom.

There, police found a bloodstained keyhole saw but no trace of Rogers himself.

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.

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.

In 1975, a Houston judge declared Rogers legally dead so his estate could be probated.

The case still remains officially unsolved and Rogers remains the only suspect.

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.

Rogers' life was documented in the 1992 book The Man on the Grassy Knoll by John R. Craig and Philip A. Rogers.

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.

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.

In this account, Rogers fled to Guatemala.

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."