Forensic Files (1996–2011): Season 14, Episode 11 - Water Logged - full transcript
The bodies of a woman and her two daughters are found floating in Tampa Bay, Florida. Police discover a handwritten note in their car and hope it will solve the triple murder.
NARRATOR: Up next.
Three women are in Florida
on their first real vacation.
MIKE DEESON: These women,
who were here by themselves,
thought this is great.
We're seeing Tampa Bay .
NARRATOR: The evidence
suggests they took a boat ride
and then disappeared.
But there was little
else to go on.
MIKE DEESON: -There are
hundreds, if not thousands,
of miles to look over to
find a piece of evidence.
SARAH DEUBEL:
-Hairs , fibers, any
fingerprints would
have been washed away.
NARRATOR: But a
public billboard turns
citizens into investigators.
TERESA STUBBS: -I thought it was
an excellent idea, brilliant.
NARRATOR: On a warm June
morning in Tampa, Florida,
authorities
discovered the bodies
of three women
floating in Tampa Bay.
MIKE DEESON: They knew
that there was foul play
because the women were tied
up and had bricks around them.
NARRATOR: The victims had
their mouths taped shut,
were naked from the
waist down, and had
been bound with yellow rope.
JO ANN STEFFEY: It was horrible.
It was terrible.
It was beyond
comprehension to think
anyone could do what
was done to those girls.
NARRATOR: The first question
facing investigators was
the identity of
these three women.
SARAH DEUBEL: There's no ID,
so we weren't able to identify
who these individuals
were, where they came from,
and who they might
have had contact
with prior to this event.
NARRATOR: Although each victim
was tied to a 30 pound concrete
block, decomposition
created gases
that lifted both the bodies and
concrete blocks to the surface.
GLEN MOORE: The water
temperature was hot.
Had this occurred in much
colder temperatures, much
colder water, one
cinder block might
have held them
under the surface.
You'd have to do a lot of study
on that to figure that out.
NARRATOR: The medical examiner
estimated the bodies had been
in the water for at
least three days.
To pinpoint where the
victims were put in the water
investigators asked the
University of South Florida
to analyze the currents
for that time period.
GLEN MOORE: And they felt
they were probably thrown in
out in the center of
the bay somewhere.
It wasn't off of a bridge.
It was not off of any shoreline.
NARRATOR: After a media
outlets picked up the story,
the manager of a local
hotel called the police.
He said a woman and
her two daughters
checked into his hotel
three days earlier.
He said he hadn't
seen them after that,
but their belongings
were still there.
GLEN MOORE: None of the personal
belongings working that's
what they were all
the same as they
have been for a couple days.
DOUGLAS CROW: There
was no evidence
that anyone had
been in the room.
The beds were never ruffled,
the towels where never wet.
Everything was in
the same place.
NARRATOR: The room
was registered
to Joan Rogers and
her two daughters.
Police contacted Joan's husband,
Hal Rogers, a dairy farmer
in Ohio.
HAL ROGERS: The Sheriff
got a hold of me,
and we had to get dental
records to identify them.
NARRATOR: Dental records
confirmed that the victims were
36-year-old Joan
Rogers, 17-year-old
Michelle, and
14-year-old Kristi.
The autopsy confirmed
everyone's worst fears.
Water was found in the victim's
lungs, which meant they were
thrown into the ocean while
they were still alive.
To investigators this
wasn't just murder.
It was an execution.
MIKE DEESON: The horror
of that resonated
through the Tampa Bay Area.
People wanted to know
what kind of animal
would do something like that.
GLEN MOORE: I think he left
there as uncovered because he
wanted each one of
them to see what
was happening to the other one.
I think he wanted to see the
fear that was in their eyes
as he was doing what he was
doing with them, which is
about as perverted
as you can get.
NARRATOR: But who wanted
the murder three tourists
and dump their
bodies in Tampa Bay?
When Joan Rogers
and her daughters
drove to Florida for a
week of sight seeing,
Joan's husband, Hal, the girl's
father, decided to stay behind.
GLEN MOORE: He had a dairy farm
he was running at the time.
That's a 365 day a year job.
But even though his family
didn't return home as planned,
Hal Rogers waited three
days to contact police.
STEPHEN G. PORTER: He
seemed somewhat cold to me.
Very cold.
Here's a person who's just
lost his entire family.
Not just one, but three people.
And there was no emotion.
NARRATOR: Hal told
police he didn't
have time to be emotional.
He had a farm to run.
HAL ROGERS: I just did what
I needed to do to function
and didn't worry
about nothing else.
NARRATOR: Investigators
tracked Hal's whereabouts
for the day of the murders.
Fortunately for Hal, he didn't
like to cook for himself,
so we ate his meals at
the local restaurants.
And numerous witnesses
provided his alibi.
HAL ROGERS: The
people here knew it,
because I'd been to
breakfast that morning
and that evening for dinner.
So, you know, it's an
almost impossibility.
NARRATOR: At the autopsies,
the medical examiner
discovered the
seawater had eliminated
crucial forensic evidence.
SARAH DEUBEL: When the
body is being submerged
in the water for
the length of time
that they were, any trace
evidence, hairs, fibers,
any fingerprints
would have been washed
away, essentially, by the water.
NARRATOR: It was impossible
to say for certain
if the victims had been
sexually assaulted.
GLEN MOORE: We had nothing to go
on, as far as forensic evidence
to amount to anything.
Police were on the lookout
for Joan Rogers' car.
And they found it.
At a public boat launch.
It was one mile away
from the Rogers' hotel.
25 miles away from where
their bodies were recovered
inside the car, were
two handwritten notes.
One on one, were
directions to the hotel.
The other, on hotel
stationary, contained
directions to the boat launch.
The writing samples were
sent to a forensic document
examiner for analysis.
TERESA STUBBS: The handwriting
that appeared on the Days Inn
letterhead was written
by Joan Rogers.
And we knew that because
we received quite a bit
of her handwriting
for comparison.
NARRATOR: The handwriting
on the other note,
the one with directions to the
Rogers' hotel, was distinctive.
TERESA STUBBS: I determined that
the handwriting on the brochure
was not written by the mother
or either of her daughters.
NARRATOR: In the word Courtney,
part of the hotel's address,
the T was capitalized in
the middle of the word.
TERESA STUBBS: This is unusual,
not only because it's a capital
letter, but because of the
spatial quality of the small R
to the tall T. And the
letter Y was written in a way
that Teresa Stubbs
had never seen before.
TERESA STUBBS: The letter
Y was written four times,
and each time it was
written differently.
Just a slight variation,
but different.
That was important.
MIKE DEESON: So they're
working it really hard.
We got to find who
wrote this note.
We do that, we find the killer.
NARRATOR: Besides
the handwriting,
the note held one other clue.
Next to the directions
to the both launch,
Joan Rogers had written
the phrase blue with W H T.
GLEN MOORE: We just
surmised it was--
they were meeting something
that was blue and white.
If you're going to a
boat ramp, what might you
be meeting that would
be blue and white?
It'd be a boat.
NARRATOR: But there were no
boats docked at the launch.
It's an area where anyone,
residents or even tourists,
can put their boats into the
water for a day of boating.
Then police got a break.
A tipster told them
about a local man,
who was running an unlicensed
business from this boat launch,
offering tourists sunset
cruises on the bay.
His name was Jason Wilcox, and
he owned a blue and white boat.
A background check revealed
Wilcox had a criminal record
and had served time
for aggravated assault.
He lived just five miles
from the boat launch.
GLEN MOORE: On his property
where his boat was he
had some concrete blocks.
NARRATOR: Wilcox denied any
involvement in the murders.
But without any
physical evidence
to tie him to the
Rogers women, it
would be difficult
to get a court
order for his
handwriting sample.
GLEN MOORE: You can
find the suspect.
You can even find the
one you think did it,
but now proving it as
a whole other ballgame.
NARRATOR: Two weeks
before the murders
of Joan Rogers and
her two daughters.
Homicide investigators
learned of a similar crime
involving a 24-year-old
Canadian tourist and a man
in a blue and white boat.
MIKE DEESON: She's a
tourist, and he offers her
a ride on the bay,
she goes wow great.
NARRATOR: Once they
were out on the water
where no one could
see them, the man
said he'd kill her if she
didn't have sex with him.
He also told her there were
sharks in the water in case
she was thinking of
trying to swim to shore.
MIKE DEESON: She says please,
please don't do anything to me.
I'm a virgin.
She said he got very
excited about it.
He rapes her.
And he told her
before he raped her,
it's not worth getting
murdered over a sexual assault.
And he apparently had
ropes on the boat,
just as he did with
the Rogers' family.
NARRATOR: Afterwards, the
man got physically ill.
MIKE DEESON: Was
it a matter of he
was so excited that he was
physiologically overcome?
Or was it that he,
psychologically,
was so appalled by his
act that he got sick?
I'm not a psychologist
or a physiologist,
but certainly that's
bizarre behavior.
NARRATOR: Inexplicably,
the man waited until dark,
drew close to shore, and
allowed the young woman
to swim to safety.
Investigators were
fairly certain it
was the same man who
murdered the Rogers family.
DOUGLAS CROW: The parallels
were pretty eerie.
NARRATOR: Unfortunately, the
victim took a shower before she
went to police headquarters
to report the, crime,
so no DNA was recovered.
But her description of
the man enabled police
to create this
composite sketch, which
was distributed to
the local media.
The victim said Jason Wilcox was
not the man who assaulted her,
and Wilcox was also
eliminated as a suspect
in the Rogers case.
GLEN MOORE: In the end, he
was given a polygraph test
and was cleared on all that.
And actually had some alibi
to where he was at the time.
The composite sketch
prompted hundreds of leads.
All of which had
to be followed up.
The description of a
blue and white boat
also generated plenty of hits.
GLEN MOORE: We had close to
800 men that were called in.
A lot of the had to do
a blue and white boats.
So that was a big, big job to
eliminate all these persons
of interest that
were called into us.
NARRATOR: After those leads
turned out to be dead ends,
investigators tried
something else.
They used five area billboards
to display the sample of what
they believed was the
killers handwriting.
MIKE DEESON: That was
an unusual tactic,
and I believe they did
it just because they
had no place else to go.
NARRATOR: That's when Jo Ann
Steffey saw the billboard
on the side of a
Tampa highway, and she
recognized the handwriting.
It looked like the handwriting
of a contractor she knew,
Oba Chandler.
JO ANN STEFFEY: When I first
initially met Mr. Chandler,
he came across as-- as
not telling the truth,
and he wouldn't
look you in the eye.
He just seemed shifty.
NARRATOR: Jo Ann rushed home and
found the handwritten receipt
for some work Chandler
had done for her.
JO ANN STEFFEY: As
I was looking at it,
my knees actually buckled.
I nearly fell from the
sheer shock of the proof
now, to me, that this-- this
was the man they'd been looking
for all its time,
and I knew there
was no turning
back at this point.
That I had to get
everything to the police.
NARRATOR: Oba Chandler's
handwritten receipt
was compared to the handwritten
note found in Joan Rogers' car.
TERESA STUBBS: It
was like oh my god.
This is it.
I immediately saw the
capital T repeatedly
throughout his writing.
My heart started racing.
I found all the Y's
and the variations
that were on the brochure .
Within minutes, I knew
I'd found the writer.
NARRATOR: Oba Chandler
was 43 years old
and ran a construction business.
He was married and
had eight children
by seven different women.
He also had a criminal
record dating back
to is teens that included
two sexual assaults.
But what was most telling
was where Chandler lived.
STEPHEN G. PORTER: Oba
Chandler's residence
was on a canal that was probably
within a half mile, a mile,
of where the boat ramp where
the victim's vehicle was found.
NARRATOR: Investigators
tracked down ship
to shore phone records,
which are recorded
for all boats making
calls while on the water.
STEPHEN G. PORTER: These records
actually put Oba Chandler out
on the water, not only
on the day of the rape,
but also on the day
of the homicide.
And this was just a
very, very great find.
NARRATOR: Chandler denied any
involvement in the murders.
But once he was
in custody, police
brought in one person who
could possibly identify him,
the Canadian tourist
who had been raped
by a man in a blue
and white boat.
DOUGLAS CROW: She
picked his photograph
and reacted visibly as soon
as that photograph was shown.
And she indicated
that she would really
like to see him
live in the lineup
to be absolutely certain.
NARRATOR: This
resulted in another
positive identification.
But just as investigators went
to inspect Chandler's boat,
they discovered he had
sold it, most likely
to get rid of
potential evidence.
Prosecutors knew if they
were going to get a murder
conviction, they'd need more
evidence than just handwriting.
A forensic document examiner
was already convinced it was
Oba Chandler's handwriting
on the brochure
found in Joan Rogers' car.
But investigators wondered
if there was anything else
on the brochure that would
guarantee a conviction.
SARAH DEUBEL: The brochure
was processed with a chemical
called ninhydrin, a
chemical that reacts
with amino acids found
in fingerprint residue.
NARRATOR: Prints, when they
come in contact with ninhydrin,
will turn purple and could
then be photographed.
On the brochure, were
numerous fingerprints
and one palm print.
SARAH DEUBEL: One
of the victimes
was identified as being
the source of some
of those impressions,
but there were also
unidentified prints
on that brochure.
NARRATOR: The best
unidentified print
was a high quality
right palm print.
When Chandler's right palm print
was compared to the palm print
on the brochure found
in the victim's car,
there was no doubt.
GLEN MOORE: That not only
linked our hand writing
to the brochure, but
also a palm print,
and you don't get
much better than that.
NARRATOR: Oba Chandler was
charged with three counts
of kidnapping and
first degree murder.
Investigators believe Chandler
met Joan Rogers at a gas
station where Joan
may have asked
him for directions
to their hotel.
CHANDLER: You know, if you've
got something I can write down
on, I can give you instructions.
JOAN ROGERS: Here, you
can just write it on this.
NARRATOR: Chandler
wrote them on her map,
leaving behind a handwriting
sample and his palm print.
CHANDLER: Here you go.
So you ladies here on vacation?
JOAN ROGERS: Yeah,
we're here from Ohio.
CHANDLER: Really?
You guys like boats?
NARRATOR: And that's when
Chandler may have offered
to give them a sunset
cruise on his boat.
An offer the girls accepted.
Chandler gave Joan directions
to the boat launch,
and when she wrote them, she
also jotted down a vital clue:
blue with WHT.
Later that night, Chandler
took them out on the water
where they were at his mercy.
The women couldn't
swim, so there
was no way they could've
made it to shore safely.
They had no option
but to comply.
They were bound, and gagged,
and presumably sexually assault.
Later, he tied each one of
them to a concrete block
and threw them overboard.
Chandler left an
electronic trail
when he called his
wife on the ship
to shore radio to tell her
his boat had engine trouble
and that he'd be
late for dinner.
Chandler's other
mistake was leaving
his handwriting and
palm print behind.
Oba Chandler was
tried, convicted,
and sentenced to death.
JUDGE: Oba Chandler, you have
not only forfeited your right
to live among us, under the
laws of the state of Florida,
you have forfeited your
right to live at all.
Mr. Chandler, may God
have mercy on your soul.
NARRATOR: The bold decision to
put the handwriting evidence
on billboards for
the entire city
to see made the
difference in this case.
TERESA STUBBS: I thought it was
an excellent idea, brilliant,
because detectives can only
work on leads that they receive,
and when they've exhausted
every possible lead they have,
that's when it becomes necessary
to try something different,
and let the public in.
MIKE DEESON: The investigators
were up against a dead end.
They didn't know
what to do, and they
said what do we have to lose
by putting up this billboard.
And yeah, it was
a gamble, but it
was a gamble that
certainly paid off.
DOUGLAS CROW: I
think the singular
uh break in the case came
with the identification
of the handwriting.
That was his ultimate undoing.
Three women are in Florida
on their first real vacation.
MIKE DEESON: These women,
who were here by themselves,
thought this is great.
We're seeing Tampa Bay .
NARRATOR: The evidence
suggests they took a boat ride
and then disappeared.
But there was little
else to go on.
MIKE DEESON: -There are
hundreds, if not thousands,
of miles to look over to
find a piece of evidence.
SARAH DEUBEL:
-Hairs , fibers, any
fingerprints would
have been washed away.
NARRATOR: But a
public billboard turns
citizens into investigators.
TERESA STUBBS: -I thought it was
an excellent idea, brilliant.
NARRATOR: On a warm June
morning in Tampa, Florida,
authorities
discovered the bodies
of three women
floating in Tampa Bay.
MIKE DEESON: They knew
that there was foul play
because the women were tied
up and had bricks around them.
NARRATOR: The victims had
their mouths taped shut,
were naked from the
waist down, and had
been bound with yellow rope.
JO ANN STEFFEY: It was horrible.
It was terrible.
It was beyond
comprehension to think
anyone could do what
was done to those girls.
NARRATOR: The first question
facing investigators was
the identity of
these three women.
SARAH DEUBEL: There's no ID,
so we weren't able to identify
who these individuals
were, where they came from,
and who they might
have had contact
with prior to this event.
NARRATOR: Although each victim
was tied to a 30 pound concrete
block, decomposition
created gases
that lifted both the bodies and
concrete blocks to the surface.
GLEN MOORE: The water
temperature was hot.
Had this occurred in much
colder temperatures, much
colder water, one
cinder block might
have held them
under the surface.
You'd have to do a lot of study
on that to figure that out.
NARRATOR: The medical examiner
estimated the bodies had been
in the water for at
least three days.
To pinpoint where the
victims were put in the water
investigators asked the
University of South Florida
to analyze the currents
for that time period.
GLEN MOORE: And they felt
they were probably thrown in
out in the center of
the bay somewhere.
It wasn't off of a bridge.
It was not off of any shoreline.
NARRATOR: After a media
outlets picked up the story,
the manager of a local
hotel called the police.
He said a woman and
her two daughters
checked into his hotel
three days earlier.
He said he hadn't
seen them after that,
but their belongings
were still there.
GLEN MOORE: None of the personal
belongings working that's
what they were all
the same as they
have been for a couple days.
DOUGLAS CROW: There
was no evidence
that anyone had
been in the room.
The beds were never ruffled,
the towels where never wet.
Everything was in
the same place.
NARRATOR: The room
was registered
to Joan Rogers and
her two daughters.
Police contacted Joan's husband,
Hal Rogers, a dairy farmer
in Ohio.
HAL ROGERS: The Sheriff
got a hold of me,
and we had to get dental
records to identify them.
NARRATOR: Dental records
confirmed that the victims were
36-year-old Joan
Rogers, 17-year-old
Michelle, and
14-year-old Kristi.
The autopsy confirmed
everyone's worst fears.
Water was found in the victim's
lungs, which meant they were
thrown into the ocean while
they were still alive.
To investigators this
wasn't just murder.
It was an execution.
MIKE DEESON: The horror
of that resonated
through the Tampa Bay Area.
People wanted to know
what kind of animal
would do something like that.
GLEN MOORE: I think he left
there as uncovered because he
wanted each one of
them to see what
was happening to the other one.
I think he wanted to see the
fear that was in their eyes
as he was doing what he was
doing with them, which is
about as perverted
as you can get.
NARRATOR: But who wanted
the murder three tourists
and dump their
bodies in Tampa Bay?
When Joan Rogers
and her daughters
drove to Florida for a
week of sight seeing,
Joan's husband, Hal, the girl's
father, decided to stay behind.
GLEN MOORE: He had a dairy farm
he was running at the time.
That's a 365 day a year job.
But even though his family
didn't return home as planned,
Hal Rogers waited three
days to contact police.
STEPHEN G. PORTER: He
seemed somewhat cold to me.
Very cold.
Here's a person who's just
lost his entire family.
Not just one, but three people.
And there was no emotion.
NARRATOR: Hal told
police he didn't
have time to be emotional.
He had a farm to run.
HAL ROGERS: I just did what
I needed to do to function
and didn't worry
about nothing else.
NARRATOR: Investigators
tracked Hal's whereabouts
for the day of the murders.
Fortunately for Hal, he didn't
like to cook for himself,
so we ate his meals at
the local restaurants.
And numerous witnesses
provided his alibi.
HAL ROGERS: The
people here knew it,
because I'd been to
breakfast that morning
and that evening for dinner.
So, you know, it's an
almost impossibility.
NARRATOR: At the autopsies,
the medical examiner
discovered the
seawater had eliminated
crucial forensic evidence.
SARAH DEUBEL: When the
body is being submerged
in the water for
the length of time
that they were, any trace
evidence, hairs, fibers,
any fingerprints
would have been washed
away, essentially, by the water.
NARRATOR: It was impossible
to say for certain
if the victims had been
sexually assaulted.
GLEN MOORE: We had nothing to go
on, as far as forensic evidence
to amount to anything.
Police were on the lookout
for Joan Rogers' car.
And they found it.
At a public boat launch.
It was one mile away
from the Rogers' hotel.
25 miles away from where
their bodies were recovered
inside the car, were
two handwritten notes.
One on one, were
directions to the hotel.
The other, on hotel
stationary, contained
directions to the boat launch.
The writing samples were
sent to a forensic document
examiner for analysis.
TERESA STUBBS: The handwriting
that appeared on the Days Inn
letterhead was written
by Joan Rogers.
And we knew that because
we received quite a bit
of her handwriting
for comparison.
NARRATOR: The handwriting
on the other note,
the one with directions to the
Rogers' hotel, was distinctive.
TERESA STUBBS: I determined that
the handwriting on the brochure
was not written by the mother
or either of her daughters.
NARRATOR: In the word Courtney,
part of the hotel's address,
the T was capitalized in
the middle of the word.
TERESA STUBBS: This is unusual,
not only because it's a capital
letter, but because of the
spatial quality of the small R
to the tall T. And the
letter Y was written in a way
that Teresa Stubbs
had never seen before.
TERESA STUBBS: The letter
Y was written four times,
and each time it was
written differently.
Just a slight variation,
but different.
That was important.
MIKE DEESON: So they're
working it really hard.
We got to find who
wrote this note.
We do that, we find the killer.
NARRATOR: Besides
the handwriting,
the note held one other clue.
Next to the directions
to the both launch,
Joan Rogers had written
the phrase blue with W H T.
GLEN MOORE: We just
surmised it was--
they were meeting something
that was blue and white.
If you're going to a
boat ramp, what might you
be meeting that would
be blue and white?
It'd be a boat.
NARRATOR: But there were no
boats docked at the launch.
It's an area where anyone,
residents or even tourists,
can put their boats into the
water for a day of boating.
Then police got a break.
A tipster told them
about a local man,
who was running an unlicensed
business from this boat launch,
offering tourists sunset
cruises on the bay.
His name was Jason Wilcox, and
he owned a blue and white boat.
A background check revealed
Wilcox had a criminal record
and had served time
for aggravated assault.
He lived just five miles
from the boat launch.
GLEN MOORE: On his property
where his boat was he
had some concrete blocks.
NARRATOR: Wilcox denied any
involvement in the murders.
But without any
physical evidence
to tie him to the
Rogers women, it
would be difficult
to get a court
order for his
handwriting sample.
GLEN MOORE: You can
find the suspect.
You can even find the
one you think did it,
but now proving it as
a whole other ballgame.
NARRATOR: Two weeks
before the murders
of Joan Rogers and
her two daughters.
Homicide investigators
learned of a similar crime
involving a 24-year-old
Canadian tourist and a man
in a blue and white boat.
MIKE DEESON: She's a
tourist, and he offers her
a ride on the bay,
she goes wow great.
NARRATOR: Once they
were out on the water
where no one could
see them, the man
said he'd kill her if she
didn't have sex with him.
He also told her there were
sharks in the water in case
she was thinking of
trying to swim to shore.
MIKE DEESON: She says please,
please don't do anything to me.
I'm a virgin.
She said he got very
excited about it.
He rapes her.
And he told her
before he raped her,
it's not worth getting
murdered over a sexual assault.
And he apparently had
ropes on the boat,
just as he did with
the Rogers' family.
NARRATOR: Afterwards, the
man got physically ill.
MIKE DEESON: Was
it a matter of he
was so excited that he was
physiologically overcome?
Or was it that he,
psychologically,
was so appalled by his
act that he got sick?
I'm not a psychologist
or a physiologist,
but certainly that's
bizarre behavior.
NARRATOR: Inexplicably,
the man waited until dark,
drew close to shore, and
allowed the young woman
to swim to safety.
Investigators were
fairly certain it
was the same man who
murdered the Rogers family.
DOUGLAS CROW: The parallels
were pretty eerie.
NARRATOR: Unfortunately, the
victim took a shower before she
went to police headquarters
to report the, crime,
so no DNA was recovered.
But her description of
the man enabled police
to create this
composite sketch, which
was distributed to
the local media.
The victim said Jason Wilcox was
not the man who assaulted her,
and Wilcox was also
eliminated as a suspect
in the Rogers case.
GLEN MOORE: In the end, he
was given a polygraph test
and was cleared on all that.
And actually had some alibi
to where he was at the time.
The composite sketch
prompted hundreds of leads.
All of which had
to be followed up.
The description of a
blue and white boat
also generated plenty of hits.
GLEN MOORE: We had close to
800 men that were called in.
A lot of the had to do
a blue and white boats.
So that was a big, big job to
eliminate all these persons
of interest that
were called into us.
NARRATOR: After those leads
turned out to be dead ends,
investigators tried
something else.
They used five area billboards
to display the sample of what
they believed was the
killers handwriting.
MIKE DEESON: That was
an unusual tactic,
and I believe they did
it just because they
had no place else to go.
NARRATOR: That's when Jo Ann
Steffey saw the billboard
on the side of a
Tampa highway, and she
recognized the handwriting.
It looked like the handwriting
of a contractor she knew,
Oba Chandler.
JO ANN STEFFEY: When I first
initially met Mr. Chandler,
he came across as-- as
not telling the truth,
and he wouldn't
look you in the eye.
He just seemed shifty.
NARRATOR: Jo Ann rushed home and
found the handwritten receipt
for some work Chandler
had done for her.
JO ANN STEFFEY: As
I was looking at it,
my knees actually buckled.
I nearly fell from the
sheer shock of the proof
now, to me, that this-- this
was the man they'd been looking
for all its time,
and I knew there
was no turning
back at this point.
That I had to get
everything to the police.
NARRATOR: Oba Chandler's
handwritten receipt
was compared to the handwritten
note found in Joan Rogers' car.
TERESA STUBBS: It
was like oh my god.
This is it.
I immediately saw the
capital T repeatedly
throughout his writing.
My heart started racing.
I found all the Y's
and the variations
that were on the brochure .
Within minutes, I knew
I'd found the writer.
NARRATOR: Oba Chandler
was 43 years old
and ran a construction business.
He was married and
had eight children
by seven different women.
He also had a criminal
record dating back
to is teens that included
two sexual assaults.
But what was most telling
was where Chandler lived.
STEPHEN G. PORTER: Oba
Chandler's residence
was on a canal that was probably
within a half mile, a mile,
of where the boat ramp where
the victim's vehicle was found.
NARRATOR: Investigators
tracked down ship
to shore phone records,
which are recorded
for all boats making
calls while on the water.
STEPHEN G. PORTER: These records
actually put Oba Chandler out
on the water, not only
on the day of the rape,
but also on the day
of the homicide.
And this was just a
very, very great find.
NARRATOR: Chandler denied any
involvement in the murders.
But once he was
in custody, police
brought in one person who
could possibly identify him,
the Canadian tourist
who had been raped
by a man in a blue
and white boat.
DOUGLAS CROW: She
picked his photograph
and reacted visibly as soon
as that photograph was shown.
And she indicated
that she would really
like to see him
live in the lineup
to be absolutely certain.
NARRATOR: This
resulted in another
positive identification.
But just as investigators went
to inspect Chandler's boat,
they discovered he had
sold it, most likely
to get rid of
potential evidence.
Prosecutors knew if they
were going to get a murder
conviction, they'd need more
evidence than just handwriting.
A forensic document examiner
was already convinced it was
Oba Chandler's handwriting
on the brochure
found in Joan Rogers' car.
But investigators wondered
if there was anything else
on the brochure that would
guarantee a conviction.
SARAH DEUBEL: The brochure
was processed with a chemical
called ninhydrin, a
chemical that reacts
with amino acids found
in fingerprint residue.
NARRATOR: Prints, when they
come in contact with ninhydrin,
will turn purple and could
then be photographed.
On the brochure, were
numerous fingerprints
and one palm print.
SARAH DEUBEL: One
of the victimes
was identified as being
the source of some
of those impressions,
but there were also
unidentified prints
on that brochure.
NARRATOR: The best
unidentified print
was a high quality
right palm print.
When Chandler's right palm print
was compared to the palm print
on the brochure found
in the victim's car,
there was no doubt.
GLEN MOORE: That not only
linked our hand writing
to the brochure, but
also a palm print,
and you don't get
much better than that.
NARRATOR: Oba Chandler was
charged with three counts
of kidnapping and
first degree murder.
Investigators believe Chandler
met Joan Rogers at a gas
station where Joan
may have asked
him for directions
to their hotel.
CHANDLER: You know, if you've
got something I can write down
on, I can give you instructions.
JOAN ROGERS: Here, you
can just write it on this.
NARRATOR: Chandler
wrote them on her map,
leaving behind a handwriting
sample and his palm print.
CHANDLER: Here you go.
So you ladies here on vacation?
JOAN ROGERS: Yeah,
we're here from Ohio.
CHANDLER: Really?
You guys like boats?
NARRATOR: And that's when
Chandler may have offered
to give them a sunset
cruise on his boat.
An offer the girls accepted.
Chandler gave Joan directions
to the boat launch,
and when she wrote them, she
also jotted down a vital clue:
blue with WHT.
Later that night, Chandler
took them out on the water
where they were at his mercy.
The women couldn't
swim, so there
was no way they could've
made it to shore safely.
They had no option
but to comply.
They were bound, and gagged,
and presumably sexually assault.
Later, he tied each one of
them to a concrete block
and threw them overboard.
Chandler left an
electronic trail
when he called his
wife on the ship
to shore radio to tell her
his boat had engine trouble
and that he'd be
late for dinner.
Chandler's other
mistake was leaving
his handwriting and
palm print behind.
Oba Chandler was
tried, convicted,
and sentenced to death.
JUDGE: Oba Chandler, you have
not only forfeited your right
to live among us, under the
laws of the state of Florida,
you have forfeited your
right to live at all.
Mr. Chandler, may God
have mercy on your soul.
NARRATOR: The bold decision to
put the handwriting evidence
on billboards for
the entire city
to see made the
difference in this case.
TERESA STUBBS: I thought it was
an excellent idea, brilliant,
because detectives can only
work on leads that they receive,
and when they've exhausted
every possible lead they have,
that's when it becomes necessary
to try something different,
and let the public in.
MIKE DEESON: The investigators
were up against a dead end.
They didn't know
what to do, and they
said what do we have to lose
by putting up this billboard.
And yeah, it was
a gamble, but it
was a gamble that
certainly paid off.
DOUGLAS CROW: I
think the singular
uh break in the case came
with the identification
of the handwriting.
That was his ultimate undoing.