True Crime/Paranormal/Conspiracy Theories Part VII

Oba Chandler

Oba Chandler (October 11, 1946 – November 15, 2011) was an American serial killer and mass murderer who was convicted and executed for the June 1989 murders of Joan Rogers and her two daughters, whose bodies were found floating in Tampa Bay, Florida, with their hands and feet bound. Autopsies showed the victims had been thrown into the water while still alive, with ropes tied to a concrete block around their necks. The case became high-profile in 1992 when local police posted billboards bearing enlarged images of the suspect's handwriting recovered from a pamphlet in the victims' car. Chandler was identified as the killer when his neighbor recognized the handwriting.

Before his arrest, Chandler worked as an unlicensed aluminum-siding contractor. Against the advice of his attorneys, he testified in his defense, saying he had met the Ohio women and had given them directions. Chandler said he never saw them again, except in newspaper coverage and on the billboards set up by authorities. Police originally theorized that two men were involved in the murders, but this was discounted once Chandler was arrested. Following his conviction, Chandler was incarcerated at Union Correctional Institution. During his seventeen years of incarceration until his execution, he did not have a single visitor.

Chandler was executed on November 15, 2011. He wrote a last statement to prison officials: "You are killing an [sic] innocent man today". The statement was read at a post-execution news conference. In February 2014, DNA evidence identified Chandler as the murderer of Ivelisse Berrios-Beguerisse, who was found dead in Coral Springs, Florida, on November 27, 1990.

Early life

Background

Chandler was the fourth of five children born to Oba Chandler Sr. and Margaret Johnson and was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. When he was ten years old in June 1957, his father hanged himself in the basement of the family's apartment. At the funeral, Chandler jumped into his father's open grave as the gravediggers were covering the coffin with dirt. Between May and September 1991‍—‌concurrent with the police investigation of the Rogers family triple murder‍—‌Chandler was an informant for the U.S. Customs Bureau's Tampa office.

Crimes and incidents

When Chandler was fourteen, he began stealing cars and was arrested twenty times as a juvenile. As an adult, he was charged with a variety of crimes, including possession of counterfeit money, loitering, burglary, kidnapping, and armed robbery. He was also accused of masturbating while peeping through a woman's window. In one incident, Chandler and an accomplice broke into a Florida couple's home, held them at gunpoint, and robbed them. Chandler told his accomplice to tie up the man with speaker wire and took the woman into the bedroom, where he made her strip to her underwear, tied her up, and rubbed the barrel of his revolver across her stomach.

Murder victims

On May 26, 1989, Joan "Jo" Rogers, 36, and her daughters‍—‌Michelle, 17, and Christe, 14‍—‌left their family dairy farm in Willshire, Ohio, for a vacation in Florida. It was the first time they had left their home state. Authorities believe Joan became lost on June 1 during the return drive from Orlando to Willshire, and had decided to take an extra vacation day in Tampa. While looking for their hotel they encountered Chandler, who gave them directions and offered to meet them again later to take them on a sunset cruise of Tampa Bay. Joan and her teenage daughters had left Orlando around 9:00 a.m. and checked into the Days Inn on Route 60 at 12:30 p.m.

Photographs retrieved from a roll of film found in a camera in the Rogers' hotel room showed Michelle sitting on the floor. The last photograph was taken from the hotel balcony and showed the sun beginning to set over Tampa Bay, confirming that all three family members were alive and had not left their hotel room as the sunset began. They were last seen alive at the hotel's restaurant at around 7:30 p.m. It is believed they boarded Chandler's boat by the dock on the Courtney Campbell Causeway—part of Route 60—between 8:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m., and that they were dead by 3 a.m. the next day. Chandler may have used the fact that he was born in Ohio to lure them into feeling a connection to him. Chandler knew Joan and her daughters were not from Florida because he saw the Ohio license plates on their car.