The strange crime mystery
Where and when: Houston, in June 1965.
What: Fred and Edwina Rodgers, 81 and 79, respectively, were murdered and then placed in their refrigerator on Father’s Day, 1965.
Why is it so creepy? Fred and Edwina had actually been killed one week prior to being placed in their “ice box.” Edwina had been beaten and shot, and Fred had his head crushed and his organs flushed down the toilet in their home. Their son Charles, 43, is the main suspect in the case, but he disappeared after the act and is not directly linked to the murders as a result.
June 23, 1965: Houston patrolmen asked to check up on an elderly couple find a house on Driscoll Street empty. But almost as an after thought, they check the kitchen.
“Opened up a refrigerator and seen nothing but meat stacked in it. My partner standing next to me made the comment that it looked like somebody had butchered a hog,” Charles Bullock said. “We didn’t know it was a body until we got ready to close the refrigerator and we could see the head down in the bottom of the vegetable bin.”
Two bodies in the icebox — 81-year-old Fred Rogers and his 79-year-old wife, Edwina. But the third resident of the house, their 43-year-old son Charles Rogers (then and now the only suspect) was gone.
“I’ve never been able to understand how someone could commit an act like this and then disappear off the face of the earth,” Houston investigator Hugh Gardenier said.
