thank god they are. >> it was hard for me to believe that he had killed his wife. it had finally broke down based on the shape of an f and l and r and just scratchings on a piece of paper. three women are in florida on vacation. >> these women thought this is great. we are seeing tampa bay. >> the evidence suggests they took a boat ride and then disappeared but there was little else to go on. >> there are hundreds if not thousands of miles to look over to find a piece of evidence. >> hairs, fibers, any finger prints would have been washed away. >> a public billboard turns citizens into investigators. >> i thought it was an excellent idea, brilliant.

on a warm, june morning in tampa, florida, authorities discover the bodies of three women floating in tampa bay. >> they knew there was foul play because the women were tied up and had bricks around them. >> the victims had their mouths taped shut, were naked from the waist down and had been bound with yellow rope. >> it was horrible, terrible, beyond comprehension. >> the first question facing investigators was the identity of these three women. >> there is no i.d. we weren't able to identify who these individuals were, where they came from and who they might have had contact with prior to the event. >> although each victim was tied to a 30 pound concrete block decomposition created gases that

lifted the bodies and concrete blocks to the surface. >> the water temperature was hot. had this occurred in colder temperatures, colder water one cinder block might have held them under the surface. >> the medical examiner estimated the bodies had been in the water for at least three days. to pin point where the victims were put in the water investigators asked the university of south florida to analyze the currents for that time period. >> and they felt that they were probably thrown in out in the center of the bay somewhere not off of the bridge or shore line. >> after media outlet picked up the story the manager of a local hotel called 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. >> there was no evidence that anyone had been in the room. the beds were never ruffled. the towels were never wet. everything was in the same place. >> the room was registered to joan rogers and her two daughters. police contacted joan's husband, hal rogers, a dairy farmer in ohio. >> sheriff got ahold of me. we had to get dental records to identify them. >> dental records confirmed that the victims were 36-year-old joan rogers, 17-year-old michelle and 14-year-old christy. the autopsy confirmed everyone's worst fears, water was found in the victims' 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. >> i think he left her eyes 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. >> who wanted to murder three tourists and dump their bodies in tampa bay? wondering what that is? that, my friends, is everything. and with the quicksilver card from capital one, you earn unlimited 1.5% cash back on everything you purchase. not just "everything at the hardware store." not "everything, until you hit your cash back limit." quicksilver can earn you unlimited 1.5% cash back on everything you could possibly imagine. say it with me -- everything. one more time, everything!

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when joan rogers and her daughters drove to florida for a week of sight seeing joan's husband decided to stay behind. >> he had a dairy farm. >> even though his family didn't return home as planned hal rogers waited three days to contact police. >> you seem somewhat cold, very cold. here is a person who lost his

entire family, not just one but three people. there was no emotion. >> hal told police he didn't have time to be emotional. he had a farm to run. >> i just did what i needed to do to function and didn't worry about nothing else. >> investigators tracked hal's whereabouts for the day of the murders. fortunately for hal he didn't like to cook for himself so he ate at local restaurants and numerous witnesses provided his alibi. >> people here know because i had been to breakfast that morning and evening for dinner. >> at the autopsies the medical examiner discovered the sea water had eliminated crucial forensic evidence. >> with the bodies being submerged in the water for the length of time that they were any trace evidence, hairs, fibers, fingerprints would have been washed away by the water. >> it was impossible to say for certain if the victims had been

sexually assaulted. >> 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 found it at a public boat launch one mile away from the hotel, 25 miles away from where their bodies were recovered. inside the car were two hand written notes. 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. >> the handwriting that appeared on days inn letter head was written by joan rogers. we knew that because we received quite a bit of her handwriting for comparison. >> the handwriting on the other note was distinctive.

>> i determined that the handwriting on the brochure was not written by the mothers or daughters. >> on the word courtney the t was capitalized in the middle of the word. >> this is unusual not only because of the capital letter but spatial quality. >> and the letter y was written in a way that teresa stubs had never seen before. >> the letter y was written four times and each time it was written differently, just a slight variation but different. that was important. >> so they are working it really hard. we have to find who wrote this note. we do that and we find the killer. >> besides the handwriting the note held one other clue. next to the directions to the boat launch joan rogers had

written the phrase blue with wht. >> what might you be meeting that is blue and white? a boat. >> there were no boats docked at the launch. it is an area where anyone can put boats in 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. >> on his property where his boat was he had concrete blocks.

>> wilcox denied any involvement in the murders. without physical evidence to tie him to the rogers women it would be difficult to get a court order for handwriting sample. >> you can find the suspect but proving it is another ball game. latte or au lait?

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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. >> she is a tourist and he offers her a ride on the bay. she goes great. >> once they were out on the water where no one could see them the man said he would 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. >> she says please, don't do anything to me. i'm a virgin. she said he got excited about it. he rapes her. he told her before he raped her it is not worth getting murdered over a sexual assault. he apparently had ropes on the

boat as he did with the roger family. >> afterwards the man got physicalally ill. >> was it a matter he was so excited he was overcome or was it that he psychologically was so appalled by his act that he got sick? >> inexplicably the man waited until dark, went close to shore and allowed the woman to swim to safety. investigators are fairly certain it was the same man who murdered the rogers family. >> the parallels were eerie. >> unfortunately the victim took a shower before reporting 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. >> and in the end he was given a polygraph test and was clear and had alibis 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 generated plenty of hits. >> we had close to 800 men called in. a lot of them had to do with blue and white boats. that was a big, big job to eliminate all of these persons of interest that were called into us. >> 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 killer's

handwriting. >> that was an unusual tactic. i believe they did it because they had no place else to go. >> that is when joanne saw the billboard on the side of the tampa highway and she recognized the handwriting. it looked like the handwriting of a contractor she knew,oba chandler. >> when i first met mr. chandler he came across as not telling the truth. he wouldn't look you in the eye. and he just seemed shifty. >> joanne rushed home and found the hand written receipt for some work chandler had done for her. >> as i was looking at it my knees buckled from the sheer shock of the proof now, to me, that this was the man they have been looking for all this time. >> the hand written receipt was compared to the hand written note found in joan rogers car.

>> i saw the capital t. i saw the ys and variations on the brochure. within minutes i knew i had found the writer. >> oba chandler was 33 years old and run a construction business. he was married and had eight children by seven different women. he also had a criminal record dating back to his teens that included two sexual assaults. but what was most telling was where chandler lived. >> oba chandler's residence was on a canal that was probably within a half mile or a mile of where the boat ramp where the victim's vehicle was found. >> investigators tracked down ship to shore phone records which are recorded for all boats making calls while on the water. >> these records actually put oba chandler on the water not

only on the day of the rape but also on the day of the homicide. >> chandler denied any involvement in the murders. 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. >> that's him. >> she picked his photograph and reacted visibly as soon as the photograph was shown and indicated she would really like to see him live in a lineup to be absolutely certain. >> look carefully. >> 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

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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 anything else would guarantee a conviction. >> prints when they come in contact with ninhydrine will turn purple. on the brochure were numerous fingerprints and one palm print. >> one was identified as being the source of impressions. there were also unidentified prints on the brochure. >> 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. >> that not only linked our handwriting to the brochure but also a palm print.

you don't get much better than that. >> 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 wrote them on her map leaving behind a handwriting sample and his palm print. that's when chandler may have offered to give them a sunset cruise on his boat a,ing an off 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 have made it to shore safely. they had no option but to comply. they were bound and gagged and presumably sexually assaulted. 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 would 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. >> oba chandler you have not only forfeited your right to live among us in florida you have forfeited your right to live at all. >> the bold decision to put the handwriting evidence on billboards for the entire city to see made the difference in this case. >> i thought it was an excellent idea, brilliant, because detectives can only work on leads that they received and when they have exhausted every possible lead they have that is when it becomes necessary to try something different and let the public in. >> 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? it was a gamble but it was a gamble that certainly paid off. >> i think the singular break in the case came with the handwriting. that was his ultimate undoing. up next, it was an ambush. >> we have a call of four people dead. >> oh my god. >> but the scene yields few clues and the motive's unclear. >> this case was tough. nothing was jumping out at us in the beginning. >> until a neighbor comes forward with a possible lead. >> they see a young man and a young woman just walking down the sidewalk dressed in all black. >> would it be enough? >> the families wanted answers, they deserved answers. >> what amazed me is it stayed a secret as long as it did. clear