When his phone calls to his elderly aunt went unanswered, Marvin Martin contacted the police for a welfare check. Nothing could have prepared them for what they would find.
Charles Frederick Rogers was born on December 30, 1921 in Houston Texas to Fred and Edwina Rogers. Charles was extremely intelligent, speaking seven languages and even receiving a degree in nuclear physics from the University of Houston. He joined the US Navy as a pilot, and during WWII served in the Office of Naval Intelligence. In the 1950’s he joined the Civil Air Patrol, a congressionally chartered, federally supported, non-profit corporation that serves as the official civilian auxiliary of the US Air Force. It is there that he met David Ferrie – a man later accused of being involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Charles took a job as a seismologist for Shell Oil, but in 1957, for no known reason, he quit, returning to live with his parents. His behavior was odd, he only communicated with his parents by slipping notes under his bedroom door. Neighbors of the Rogers family didn’t even realize that Charles was living there, as he would leave home before dawn, and only return after dark. No one knows if he was employed during this time, or even what he spent his day doing.
On June 23, 1965, Marvin Martin called the police for a welfare check on his aunt and uncle, after several of his phone calls went unanswered. Police officers knocked on the door, but when no one answered they kicked it in. They moved through the home and eventually to the kitchen, where they found food on the table, but no sign of Fred or Edwina.
One officer noticed a foul odor coming from the refrigerator. He opened it and saw stacks and stacks of various cuts of meat, which he immediately assumed to be hog meat. But then his eyes traveled down to the crisper. Inside were the heads of Fred and Edwina. An article published the next day described the scene, “On all the shelves and in the freezer compartment were the dismembered bodies, cut in unwrapped, washed off pieces smaller than individual joints.”
Fred had been beaten to death with a claw hammer, his eyes and genitalia removed. Edwina had suffered a gunshot wound to the head. Their bodies were dragged to the master bedroom upstairs where they were drained of blood and chopped into pieces, later to be stored in the refrigerator. “Whoever did this apparently took their time and knew what they were doing,” the medical examiner told the Globe-Times. “The dismembering was a fairly neat job.”
The house had been cleaned thoroughly, except for a small amount of blood on the keyhole of Charles’ bedroom door. The 43 year old man was nowhere to be found.
A nationwide manhunt ensued, and while he was considered the primary suspect, he was never found. Charles Frederick Rogers was declared legally dead in 1975.
An interesting theory, documented in the book The Man on the Grassy Knoll by John R. Craig and Philip A. Rogers, claims that Charles was a CIA agent who likely impersonated Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City and, along with Charles Harrelson, was one of two shooters involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Did Charles kill his parents? Did he have anything to do with the assassination of JFK? We may never know.
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