'Last Call Killer' revisited: Richard Rogers of Staten Island trolled victims at gay bars in Manhattan
Maura Grunlund | mauragrunlund@siadvance.com Maura Grunlund mauragrunlund@siadvance.com www.facebook.com maura.grunlund
An Oxygen TV­­ series about serial killers has revived interest in a man responsible for 4 homicides.
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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- ­­­­­­An Oxygen TV­­ series about serial killers has revived interest in a Staten Island man who worked as a pediatric nurse in Manhattan while allegedly moonlighting as the brutal "Last Call Killer."

Co-workers and neighbors were stunned when the man known as a gentle healer of children was arrested and later convicted in two horrific deaths.

Richard W. Rogers Jr., a registered nurse from Fort Wadsworth who worked for 22 years at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan, was a suspect in the gruesome killings of at least four men who vanished from Manhattan between 1991 and 1994.

Authorities claimed Rogers trolled gay bars for victims, killing them and dissecting their bodies with surgical precision. He allegedly stuffed their remains into bags and dumped them alongside highways in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Accusations against Rogers of violent and sometimes deadly attacks against men spanned decades. He was charged, but acquitted, of a gory murder in Maine in the 1970s. Fingerprints taken for the Maine arrest led to his apprehension more than 30 years later in the "Last Call" murders. In the interim, Rogers was found not guilty after a man claimed the nurse drugged and tied him up in a Staten Island apartment in the 1980s.

(Staten Island Advance/Catherine Di Meglio)

Rogers earned his nickname because he allegedly targeted some of his victims in the upscale Manhattan gay bars he frequented, including The Townhouse Bar on East 58th Street and the Five Oaks in Greenwich Village.

At least four of his suspected victims were last seen in New York City.

(Staten Island Advance/Michael McWeeney)

Authorities closed in on Rogers a few months before 9/11. Investigators from multiple agencies swarmed Rogers' unassuming home on Bridge Court to collect evidence after the then 50-year-old nurse was approached by members of the NYPD on May 27, 2001, inside the Manhattan hospital where he was assigned to the pediatric intensive care unit.

The cops used a ruse that Rogers was a victim of credit card fraud so he would agree to questioning, according to Advance and court records.

In November 2005, an Ocean County, N.J., jury deliberated for less than four hours before convicting Rogers in the July 1992 slaying of Thomas Mulcahy, 57, a married father and computer equipment sales executive from Sudbury, Mass., and the murder in May 1993 of Anthony Marrero, 44, a reputed prostitute from Manhattan, according to Advance and Newark Star-Ledger records.

Rogers was sentenced to prison for life in the Mulcahy and Marrero murders.

Various items used in the alleged crimes ultimately were linked to our borough.

Both men died of multiple stab wounds to the torso, according to a medical examiner in New Jersey.

Mulcahy and Marrero were "meticulously dismembered with a knife and handsaw," Ocean County (N.J.) Prosecutor E. David Millard was quoted as saying in a Staten Island Advance article in 2001.

(New Jersey Department of Corrections website)

Rogers is not eligible for parole until 2066, when he will be 116 years old.

The 6-foot, 170-pound killer was born on June 16, 1950, according to New Jersey Department of Corrections online records.

(Staten Island Advance/Catherine Di Meglio)

“Maintenance workers discovered Mulcahy's head on July 10, 1992, when it spilled out of a plastic bag they picked up at a Garden State Parkway rest area that day,” according to an Advance article in May 2001. “The rest of his body was found in a 55-gallon trash container at a rest stop on Route 72 in Woodland Township, Burlington County, and in trash bags at the Stafford Forge Rest Area along the parkway in Ocean County.”

Mulcahy gave a business presentation at the World Trade Center and then disappeared after leaving The Townhouse bar in July 1992.

Marrero vanished from Manhattan in May 1993.

“Almost a year after Mulcahy was found, the chopped-up remains of Marrero, a reputed gay prostitute who also went by the name of Eddy Ramos, were found in six trash bags off Crow Hill Road in Manchester Township, Ocean County. He was last seen alive near the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan,” according to an Advance article in May 2001.

(The Star-Ledger/Jon Naso)

A price sticker on a latex glove package recovered from Mulcahy’s remains allegedly was traced to a CVS on Staten Island. The same drug store also sold the brand of trash bags used to discard Mulcahy, according to court records.

Authorities were able to trace the type of bag containing Marrero's head to eleven Acme stores, including one in Staten Island. The bag was a limited issue that contained the words "President's Choice" and "Made with pride by Bob H. and Jerry H," according to court records.

In this photo from May 2001, Detective Bill Pozalante of the Ocean County, N.J., Sheriff's Department carries items seized as evidence from Rogers' Fort Wadsworth apartment

(Staten Island Advance/Michael McWeeney)

Investigators found Atlantic City casino comp cards from 2000, various items bought at Pergament, including a New Jersey road map and a shopping bag, bookmarked Bible passages about dismemberment and a video of the classic decapitation thriller, "Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte," according to court records.

In this photo, an officer guides his evidence-seeking K-9 at the Rogers' residence on Bridge Court in May 2001.

(Staten Island Advance/Catherine Di Meglio)

Rogers had at least one prior run-in with the law on Staten Island.

Rogers was accused of drugging and tying up a Manhattan man he allegedly lured to his fifth-floor Merle Place apartment on the evening of July 11, 1988, according to Advance records.

Investigators then alleged that the victim, 47-year-old Fred Lero, awoke and found himself bound to the bed in the Fort Wadsworth apartment.

Rogers was charged with first-degree unlawful imprisonment and second-degree assault.

Advance sources revealed that Rogers was granted a bench trial -- a proceeding without a jury -- in 1990, and he was acquitted by a judge in the former Stapleton Criminal Court. His case was sealed.

Authorities confirmed that Rogers' acquittal would have also expunged his record and his fingerprints would not have been placed in New York's fingerprint database.

One investigative source told the Advance in May 2001 that they would obtain a court order to unseal Rogers' court records for the purpose of their investigation. Police officials also said they planned to contact Lero in an effort to gain some insight into a possible motive for the crimes.

(The Star-Ledger/Tim McCarthy)

Rogers unsuccessfully appealed his Mulcahy and Marrero conviction on the grounds that evidence should not have been presented at his trial about two other grisly murders. Prosecutors tried to show a pattern by including information about the deaths and dismemberments of Peter Anderson, 56, of Philadelphia, in May 1991 and Michael Sakara Jr., 56, of Manhattan, in July 1993, according to court records, Advance and Star-Ledger accounts.

Anderson, a divorced father and investment banker who was in Manhattan for a political fundraiser, disappeared on Lexington Avenue near the Waldorf-Astoria following a visit to The Townhouse bar. His chopped up body-- including his genitals shoved into his mouth -- was found in bags stuffed in trash barrels at a rest area in Lancaster County, Pa. Some of his clothes were found at a rest area in Chester County, Pa.

Sakara, a typesetter who was a regular at the Five Oaks in Manhattan, allegedly was last seen leaving the piano bar with a man who fit Rogers' description. His remains allegedly were found discarded along Route 9, in trash barrels on a Hudson River overlook in Rockland County and near a guardrail at a pull-off area in Stony Brook, L.I.

(Staten Island Advance/Michael McWeeney)

Due to the similarities between the murders of Mulcahy, Marrero, Anderson and Sakara, several law enforcement agencies formed a joint task force, but the cases ran cold by the end of 1993, according to court documents and Advance, Star-Ledger and court records.

A major problem was that fingerprints from the crime scenes either could not be obtained or identified. Due to urging from Mulcahy's widow and advances in fingerprint technology and access, the joint task force was revived in 2000.

Prints were then sent out to all of the states to be checked against their individual databases and in 2001, a match was made to Rogers in Maine from his arrest in the 1970s.

Rogers' fingerprints were found on evidence in the deaths of Mulcahy, Marrero and Anderson. Some of the prints were lifted from bags containing the victims' body parts. Investigators then had what they needed to charged Rogers in the Mulcahy and Marrero deaths.

In this photo, New Jersey State Police investigated the home of Richard Rogers after he was arrested in May 2001.

(The Star-Ledger/Andrew Mills)

Maine State Police forensic scientist Kim Stevens is seen in this May 2001 photo with the actual AFIS (automated fingerprint identification system) entry she received from the New Jersey State Police with the fingerprints of Richard W. Rogers, Jr.

(The Star-Ledger/Scott Lituchy)

In this photo, Pennsylvania State Police investigators enter The Townhouse bar in Manhattan, where Rogers is thought to have met at least two of his alleged victims, Mulcahy and Anderson.

Rick Unterberg, a longtime piano player at The Townhouse, told the Advance in 2001 that he first remembered meeting Rogers in the 1990s.

"Sweet and soft-spoken," Rogers sometimes would sing Broadway show tunes with the pianist or chat between sets about theater and his job at Mount Sinai, Unterberg said.

Rogers, he said, was a "delicate, soft person, very quiet and very gentle."

Rogers was a person of interest in a number of deaths and disappearances on Staten Island and nationwide, especially since he traveled and resided in various locations throughout the years. When he was questioned in the Mulcahy and Marreo murders, he allegedly told authorities that he often took road trips to Atlantic City and to states such as Arkansas, California, Florida, Massachusetts and West Virginia.

Rogers was licensed as a registered nurse by the New York State Department of Education since 1979 and had not been disciplined for any infractions during his 22-year nursing career, according to Advance records.

As the eldest of five children, he grew up mostly in Massachusetts and Florida, according to the New York Times.

At what age Rogers started his murderous spree is a subject of much debate, but he attracted unwelcome attention from authorities for a gory murder when he was in his 20s.

Rogers was a graduate student in French at the University of Maine when he was found not guilty after he claimed self defense in the death of a roommate, Frederic Spencer. Fingerprints obtained when he was arrested in Maine helped authorities link him to the murders of Mulcahy, Marrero and Anderson.

Spencer, 22, was a graduate student at the University of Maine in Orono, living in a rooming house where Rogers resided. Spencer's body was found 20 feet off a remote road by two bicyclists, but authorities did not identify him until they traced a postal key found on him to the rooming house, according to the Star-Ledger.

Rogers was arrested after he eventually admitted that he bashed a hammer eight times into the back of Spencer's head two days before the body was found, according to the Newark Star-Ledger.