and everything that she did just backfired on her right in her face. >> because you're a killer. bottom line, look at yourself in the mirror. you know what you did and you know what you tried to do to your daughter up next -- >> a serial killer was on the loose in new york city. >> these people were chopped up. it's just a savage way to die. >> you found you pissed somebody office. >> the media called him the last call killer. >> last call for drinks. that's the last everybody had seen of him. >> nearly a decade later the police still have no suspects until advances in forensic sciences finally help pinpoint the killer. >> it's the most bizarre case i've ever been involved with. for sanitation workers collecting trash along the new jersey turnpike in 1991, it was a day like any other until they found a plastic bag so heavy the men decided to look inside. >> the worker felt like it was a

pumpkin or something. >> but it was something else. >> it was a head, a human head, a human skull. >> it was a head, a human head, a human skull. >> when police arrived at the scene, they found even more bags with more body parts. >> the body was severed into seven pieces. two legs, two arms, upper and lower torso, and the head. >> there were ligature marks on his wrist which suggest he was tied up or bound at some point. >> one bag contained latex gloves, a bed sheet, shower curtain, and the blood-stained saw. >> it tells law enforcement that this happened in some home or a rented place, a hotel room. it could be any of those things.

>> the victim's wallet was found in one of the bags. >> there was clearly no attempt to hide the identity of the victim. >> the victim was 56-year-old thomas mulcahy, an executive for a company in massachusetts who had been in new york city on a business trip. >> he was married for approximately 33 years, he had four children with the youngest being, i believe, 18 years of age, and the others were young adults. >> mulcahy had been stabbed to death and then dismember. the body parts as well as the bags themselves were washed before they were dumped. >> the washing tells us that the killer wants to remove evidence, and, two, that there's an intimate aspect to it, of keeping the body close, it's erotic, you're taking care of the victim. >> thomas mulcahy's wife told police some personal information

she felt might be pertinent. >> she said at some point in his life he started experimenting with homosexual sex. i don't know that she approved of it. >> by tracing his credit card activity, detectives learned that mulcahy's last transaction was at an atm at 11:15 p.m., two nights before his body was found. tom mulcahy withdrew $200 from an atm. with our luck the camera system was down, so we had no pictures. >> there was no evidence mulcahy had ever returned to his hotel room that night, which was only a block away. but there was evidence he had stopped in a nearby bar. >> mulcahy was seen at an upscale bar in manhattan. he was intoxicated. >> this was consistent with the medical examiner's report.

>> the medical examiner determined that thomas mulcahy's blood alcohol level was above the legal limit. >> witnesses said mulcahy was talk to a white male with brown hair, but no one could say for sure whether they left the bar together. using the witness's descriptions, police created a composite sketch, which was distributed to the media. >> we were unsuccessful. everything we did up until that point was unsuccessful. >> but there was one item found with mulcahy's body that provided an important clue. in one of the trash bags was the wrapper for the latex gloves. the price tag shows they were purchased from a cvs drugstore in staten island, new york, but the investigators still faced daunting task.

there were almost half a million people living in staten island. >> we had nothing. you know, we were grasping at straws. one year after finding

one year after finding thomas mulcahy's dismembered body, new jersey police had another case that was eerily similar, this time in manchester township, new jersey. >> the body parts were bagged in a similar fashion. they were double bagged, double knotted. the most striking thing, at least to me, was the way the bodies were dismembered into the same seven parts. prints were taken and put into the system, and it turned out that this particular individual had a minor criminal record. he was identified as anthony marrero. >> marrero's record showed he was gay prostitute. like mulcahy's case, both marrero's body parts and bags had been washed before they were dumped along the side of the road. >> we had no prints, na that could tie us to a suspect. >> also like mulcahy, marrero

had marks on his wrists and ankles. >> there's something called a. >> the cuts performs on his body were described as being disarticulated in that you actually don't just cut right through the bone, you actually pull the bones apart and cut through joints as opposed to bone. >> this disarticulation was a vital clue. >> we know it was postmortem. the procession of the cuts led us to believe that this was done by somebody who had some knowledge, somebody in the medical profession, possibly somebody along those lines. >> one of the bags found with marrero's body had the word's president's choice on it. >> this shopping bag was sold at only nine locations, and one of the locations happened to be staten island.

>> the store in staten island which sold those bags was close to the cvs drugstore that sold the latex gloves found with thomas mulcahy's body. >> the reasonable assumption is that the killer either lives or works in that neighborhood because that would be within what's called their zone of familiarity, their comfort zone. >> using a process called super gluing, investigators were able to lift two part shall fingerprints and a palm print from the bags. these prints were entered into the nationwide fingerprint database of known criminal offenders. >> the result of that entry and search were negative. there was no match. we had ran out of leads and it wasn't looking too promising. >> two months later, investigators' worst fears were realized when another body was found in garbage can 12 miles outside of new york city.

there was no doubt this was the work of the same killer. >> the body was placed in similar type garbage bags, double knotted, double bagged. there were seven pieces also. >> and, again, the bodies and the bags had been washed down. >> there was no physical evidence recovered, no dna that was foreign to him. >> the victim was identified as 56-year-old mike sakara. >> he was a fixture at the five oaks bar in greenwich village. >> the five oaks bar was a piano bar and did cater to the guy. >> lisa hall was a bartender on the night he was murdered. lisa said a white male came into the bar and sat next to mike. she had never seen the man

before. >> i assumed he knew michael because why would he when there's empty seats sit right next to him and made the man a scotch and water, and michael said, lisa, this is so-and-so. he's a nurse at st. vincent's. >> when she left the bar, michael and this man were still there. no one saw the two men leave the bar together. >> the detectives asked me for a name. i said it was like john or mark. a very common name. but i didn't really remember a name. i remembered a face. >> so investigators created a composite sketch based on lisa's description. but even lisa knew finding him wouldn't be easy.

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detectives across new york and new jersey were desperately trying to find a serial killer who was targeting gay men. the media dubbed him the last call killer. the most recent victim, mike sakara, was last seen in a bar with a white male whom he introduced to the bartender as a nurse working at st. vincent's hospital in new york. when police followed up with the

local hospitals, they identified a male nurse at st. vincent's, 38-year-old mark slaten who not only resembled the composite drawing, he also lived in staten island near the stores where the killer purchased the latex gloves and garbage bags used in the murders. unfortunately slaten's prints didn't match the prints found on the plastic bags. >> it's heartbreaking. you're out there pounding the pavement, doing everything you can, and you don't have an answer for them. so it was very frustrating. >> thinking that the killer may have misled his victims about where he worked, detective kuhn enlisted his own children in the investigation to distribute the composite sketch of the killer to all of the local hospitals. unfortunately the flyers didn't generate any significant leads and susan the case turned cold.

>> many, many man hours, hundreds of man hours devoted to these investigations and essentially the trail just went cold. >> the murders stopped, too, leading police to suspect the killer may have changed his m.o. >> so our thoughts were either he's locked up, he's dead, or he's still out there and he's just getting a lot better at it. >> then eight years later, the case went in a new direction. it happened when investigators learned about a new fingerprint technique used in toronto called vacuum metal deposition or vmd. >> the vacuum metal deposition machine is the ultimate machine to find fingerprints on nonporous material. you could have material that was stored for 50 years. >> investigators immediately sent a dozen bags from the last call killer case to toronto. they'd been in storage for years.

in the canadian lab, the bags were exposed to 10 milligrams, about 20 cents worth, of gold, which was heated to 2,000 degrees fahrenheit, enough to turn it into a gas. this gold vapor creates a film over the surface being tested, but it is invisible to the naked eye. then vaporized zinc is introduced into the chamber. it adheres to gold, which locks any prints in place so they can be photographed. >> the end product is a negative of the finger print on the surface, the nonporous material, and that's what we end up seeing. >> the vmd process yielded 16 partial prints on the bags from the mulcahy murder and three from the marrero case.

these prints were of much better quality than the original ones. the new prints were entered into the national fingerprint database of known criminal offenders. again, there were no matches. but detective kuehn also sent hard copies of the prints to each state since not all states had put their prints into the nationwide database. >> this was our last shot, and we felt that if we could reach out that maybe they'd put that little extra effort into the submission. i'm only in my 60's.

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when the fingerprints of the last call killer made it through the mail to latent print examiner kim stevens in maine state police crime lab, she was happy to help out. the state of maine hadn't yet put all their prints onto the national fingerprint database. >> i received it in the mail and a cover letter. and i read the letter and synopsis of the case. >> kim stevens entered the last call killer's prints into maine state's database. >> i thought there was no way i would get a match. i had done a lot of searches for outside agencies and the chances i thought would be very slim. >> but the database of known

criminal offenders in maine turned up 30 possible matches. >> 30 came up for me to look at one by one, side by side, to see if they could be the print. >> for the side-by-side comparison stevens used the original hard copies made by the 30 criminals when they were arrested and inked by police. it's time-consuming and exhausting. >> you want to do it when your eye is fresh and you're ready to make comparisons. >> then stevens found one that she thought matched. >> every time i went to the next ridge and found detail that agreed, obviously, it was surprise. i was jumping up and down for joy and couldn't believe it. >> the final step is to have the match verified by another examiner. and that person agreed, the prints belonged to richard rogers, a former graduate

student in languages at the university of maine. in 1973 rogers was charged with using a hammer to kill his college roommate. he wrapped the body in a plastic tent and left it on the side of the road. >> richard rogers apparently said that the other man had approached him for sex and the other man attacked him, so in self-defense he attacked back and ended up killing him. mr. rogers claimed self-defense and was acquitted. amazing. >> after he was acquitted rogers got a nursing degree and eventually moved to new york. at the time of the last call murders, rogers had been working as is surgical assistant at mt. sinai hospital in new york. that's where police arrested him. >> he was gay, didn't seem to have any long-term relationships. in your wildest dreams you would not look at richard rogers and say this guy is a serial killer.

>> we learned during the time of these murders, richard rogers had been off duty. >> lisa hall chose him in a lineup as the man she saw with mike sakara at the bar on the night sakara was murdered. >> i'm just so glad they got him before he could murder any other people. >> rogers lived in staten island, just blocks from the stores where the garbage bags and latex gloves were purchased. >> detectives searched richard rogers' apartment and they found an array of videotapes, "hush hush sweet charlotte," "texas chainsaw massacre." he had a bible in which there were earmarked passages referring to beheadings and dismemberments. >> they found a prescription drug used as a sedative. it's one not screened for in a routine autopsy.

>> you can use it as a date rape drug or you can use it to knock people out. >> prosecutors believed rogers would pick up his victims in gay bars. he targeted men who were drinking heavily. rogers may have used a date rape drug and taken his victims back to his apartment or they may have gone willingly. once there, the evidence shows he stabbed them. then dismembered the bodies. he most likely moved the bodies to new jersey at night to avoid detection. but even the most careful criminals make mistakes and rogers left evidence behind. the elaborate washing of the victims and the bags didn't remove everything. as for motive, rogers wouldn't talk.

all experts can say is that the murders had a clear sexual motivation. >> it's the most bizarre case i've ever been involved with, and for all of these men, there was just no dignity in death. >> in november of 2000 rogers was tried and convicted of two of the murders. the cases where they had the most forensic evidence. he was sentenced to two life terms plus 65 years in prison. >> we never gave up. you keep plugging along. >> it never ceases to amaze me what we get in terms of forensics, whether it's fingerprints, dna, any number of things. it's the most powerful tool you can have in the courtroom as a prosecutor. >> it was pretty horrible to sit there in court and look at this man who actually murdered mike sakara and to think of all the other people who lost their

lives and family and friends who lost people because of this monster who was sitting there, but at least he was finally put away. up next, a home invasion turns to murder. >> just extreme overkill. crime of passion, crime of rage. >> to much violence and no one with a clear motive. >> as best law enforcement established, she had no enemy. >> that is until police discovered a romance gone horribly wrong. >> you believe it will be a lover or someone who wanted her out of the way so they could be a new lover. >> i don't know if a triangle can go good, but this one went really bad. ♪