The first thing Houston police captain Charles Bullocknoticedas he entered 1815 Driscoll Street on the evening of June 23 , 1965 , was that someone did n’t want him using the back door . Flower pots had been heap against the entry , thrust Bullock and his partner , L.M. Barta , to bear on their way inside . While Barta moved through the sleep of the house , Bullock headed for the kitchen .
The two werethereto do a welfare check on the house ’s occupants , an elderly yoke named Fred and Edwina Rogers . Their nephew , Marvin Martin , had acquire concerned when he fail to reach them by phone , and became further alarmed after pink on their room access with no answer . So he had called the constabulary .
As he walk into the kitchen , something nagged at Bullock . He would laterrecallthat the scene “ just did n’t feel right . ” There are confounding accounts of what happened next . Some say he saw food for thought stacked on top of — rather than inside — the refrigerator , prompting his curio . Others say he wasthirstyfor a beer on a hot summertime eventide and want to see if there was anything to wassail . Bullock himself would say he peer inside the fridge for no particular intellect . “ I do n’t know why I looked in the icebox , ” he said . “ For some rationality I just open up it . ”
He bring a quick armoury of its contents , which appeared to be nothing but shelf after ledge of hog meat . He concluded the Rogers household must have been to the bungler recently . But with the house empty , it looked like it would spoil .
This is a shame , Bullock thought . Someone is letting a whole clustering of estimable meat go to waste .
He commence to close up the door when something caught his attention . Inside the vegetable drawer was what appear to be a char ’s heading , her eyes fixed in Bullock ’s direction . Bullock froze , then slammed the threshold shut . When he open up it , the head was still there .
The hog meat would turn out to be flesh of a dissimilar sort — the dismembered remains of Fred and Edwina Rogers , enfeeble of blood and missing their entrails . Fred ’s oral sex was in the other crisper . His centre had been gouged out .
The gruesomeness of the crime setting would have been disturbing no matter what . Making it slightly worse was the fact that the autopsy show the murders had been send on Father ’s Day , and the person most potential to have it away something about the horrific act was the elderly match ’s son , Charles .
Charles , alas , was nowhere to be base .
Fred Rogers , 81 , was a retired actual estate salesman . His married woman , Edwina , 79 , was a sales example . Their Houston home and their activities appear unremarkable to neighbors . But there was an element to their lives that came as something of a surprise to local residents who would later be questioned by police . The surprise was that Charles go with them . In fact , he owned the household .
Charles was 43 and a vet of World War II . After getting a bachelor-at-arms ’s academic degree in nuclear cathartic from the University of Houston , he hadenlistedin the Navy and learned to fly aeroplane . He became a seismologist and later spent nine year exercise for the Shell Oil Company . At the time of his parents ’ last , it was not clear-cut whether he was utilise .
Whatwasclear was that Charles was a singular individual . He would resurrect before dayspring , leavingthe house to tend to strange business before his parents fire up up , and then come back after dark , after they went to bed . His locomotion were so subtle that the next door neighbor was not even aware he live on there .
When he was home , he go out of his way to forfend his parents , supposedly slipping notes under room access when he needed to pass with them . The syndicate maidservant would later land that it was potential Edwina had not even seen Charles face - to - face for some five years prior to her last .
No one was sure what led to this unusually icy support arrangement . It ’s possible Charles need to provide for his senior parent in spitefulness of either not induce along with them or wishing not to be disturb by the outside world . Either way , it was now imperative that he answer questions about their macabre fates .
When Bullock discovered the clay , he and his partner Barta much sprinted out of the menage , calling investigators to the shot . They witness the business firm had mostly been cancel clean , save for some lineage in the bath — where they believed the bodies had been cut up — and Charles ’s attic sleeping accommodation , where there were tincture sum of blood as well as a hired man saw they believed had been used to perform the dismemberment . The head , torsos , and limbs were in the refrigerator ; the viscera were found in the sewer system , apparently having been flush down the throne . Other torso parts were miss and never found .
owe to the labour involved in draining the consistency , carving up the corpses , and cleaning the home , police force believed the Orcinus orca had taken his or her time and had a exploit noesis of human anatomy . autopsy revealed that Edwina had died as a result of a individual gunfire to the promontory , though that weapon was never found . Fred had gotten the bad of it . He had been beaten to death with a claw power hammer , his optic pull out and his genitals severed from his torso in what was ostensibly a vindictive mutilation . The claw cock was find on the premises , though law would not confirm whether any fingermark were remember .
If there was evidence , authorisation require to discuss it with Charles . They publish an all - point bulletin and launched a countrywide search . As the only presumably - living member of the household , his penetration — if not his confession — would prove invaluable . Because he knew how to fly , authorities checked nearby flying field to see if anyone match his description had left the area by airplane . Nothing turn over up . In being so reclusive , Charles left near no track for them to follow .
“ The habits and manners of the missing Logos are major mysteries , ” Captain L.D. Morrison , heading of the local homicide bureau , told reportersa few days after the bodies had been happen .
It was an understatement . Police never locate Charles — not in the calendar week , months , or old age that accompany . In 1975 , in an effort to probate the Rogers estate , he was declared de jure dead .
One of Houston ’s sanguineous murders would become one of its most notorious unresolved cases . But that has n’t stopped others from stepping forward and offering their theory about what may have transpired .
Some are outlandish , using the blank canvas of the criminal offense scene to assay and seize deeper substance to Charles ’s biography . The 1992 bookThe Man on the Grassy Knoll , by authors John R. Craig and Philip A. Rogers , offeredthat Charles was in reality a CIA operative involved in the 1963 character assassination of John F. Kennedy . When his parent discovered incriminating diary entries , Charles toss off them .
The Ice Box Murders , a 2003 book written by forensic controller and unskilled sleuths Hugh and Martha Gardenier , made an attempt to present a more plausibletheory . They agreed Charles was indeed the killer , but his motif was not the result of any CIA involvement . rather , the Gardeniers argue that Fred and Edwina were abusive and manipulative parent , doing everything from taking loan out against their son ’s home to devise his key signature on deeds to other holding he owned . After years of being browbeaten and financially rip off , Charles lash out in an bacchanalia of force , smashing his father ’s promontory in . ( That his mother make a relatively compassionate carrying out - style killing may channelise to most of the abuse hail from Fred . )
The Gardeniers asserted that a few days after the murder , someone equal Charles ’s physical description was overheard postulate about a problem overseas , using an alias . They claim that Charles utilized his contacts in the oil and mining manufacture to put down in Mexico . The book also assert that Charles run into a trigger-happy remnant of his own , when a salary dispute involving some miner in Honduras ended with a pickax lodged in his head .
TheHouston Presslabeled the Gardeniers ’ leger a workplace of “ fact - based fiction and assumption , ” leave its last up in the air . No concrete evidence seem to point to Charles wind up in Central America , though he did at one pointownhis own plane . Fleeing Houston via aircraft seems plausible , and with the Shell Oil problem taking him to Canada and Alaska , it ’s also potential he hadcontactsin another body politic that could have made set up a unexampled life well-situated .
Decades later on , it ’s unlikely the case will ever line up declaration . If Charles Rogers did not commit the law-breaking , his disappearing is incomprehensible . No one else appear to have motivation to wipe out his parent . If he was killed by an unidentified third political party , the culprit did an excellent job absent all hint of him . Whether he terminate up in Central America or somewhere else , the most likely account is that he spent the relaxation of his day doing what he ’d so often practiced at 1815 Driscoll — vanish into the darkness , unnoticed by the ease of the macrocosm .
