FL: Did Murderer, Oba Chandler, Kill Another Woman Before Murdering The Roger's Family?
Slimpickins
A body found in 1982 is similar to Oba Chandler's three victims. Officials
wonder: Is he their man?
By MIKE BRASSFIELD
© St. Petersburg Times,
published June 22, 2001
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Twelve years ago, in one of the most horrific crimes in local history, Oba
Chandler raped and killed three women from Ohio. He tied concrete blocks to
their necks with rope and tossed them into Tampa Bay.
Now investigators are wondering whether Chandler also killed a fourth woman
whose body was found floating off Anna Maria Island in 1982. A white rope
tied to a concrete block was looped around her chest and waist.
"Obviously, that matches the Oba Chandler M.O. (method of operation) in
terms of what he did with the Rogers people," said St. Petersburg police
Sgt. Mike Puetz, head of the city's homicide squad.
Chandler killed Joan Rogers, 36, and her daughters, Michelle, 17, and
Christe, 14. He was convicted in 1994 and is on Florida's Death Row.
Manatee County investigators recently reopened the case of the mysterious
Jane Doe found in the Gulf of Mexico in September 1982 nearly 27 miles
northwest of Longboat Pass.
St. Petersburg police will search their files to see where Chandler was in
the summer of 1982 -- specifically, whether he was behind bars at the time.
"If he was out and about at that period of time, it's certainly not out of
the realm of possibility that he would be a suspect in that case," Puetz
said.
They'll pass along their findings to Manatee investigators. However, linking
Chandler to this fourth killing would be a challenge, Puetz said.
The dead woman has never been identified, and Chandler has never admitted
killing the Rogers women. Even as he awaits execution, he has maintained his
innocence.
"Without an identity, it makes it extra hard to trace her last steps," Puetz
said. "It's a daunting task without a victim identification and with an
uncooperative suspect."
But the District 12 Medical Examiner's Office in Bradenton still hopes to
identify the woman.
Last week, officials removed her body from its grave, hoping to link the
remains to a Pasco County 16-year-old who has been missing since April 1982.
Wendy Huggy was at a friend's apartment in Clearwater and was expected back
at her grandmother's in Holiday, but she never came home. She is Pasco
County's only longtime missing child case.
Forensic dentists compared Huggy's dental charts to the murder victim's
skull, but decided they were too different; the woman was not Huggy.
Investigators aren't giving up. The woman's bones will be taken to the
University of Florida next week to be examined by a forensic anthropologist.
The woman's right hand yielded five fingerprints. The Manatee County
Sheriff's Office entered the new prints into state and local databases but
didn't find a match. Detectives are working to get them entered into
fingerprint databases maintained by other states and the federal government.
The cases of the Rogers women and the Jane Doe found in 1982 appear similar,
but there is one difference. All the Rogers women were stripped from the
waist down, and the Jane Doe was wearing jeans.
Chandler was living in Florida in 1982; federal agents arrested him in
Orlando for counterfeiting that year. Chandler later served time in a
federal prison in Texas before returning to Florida to serve a prison
sentence for robbery.
-- The Sarasota Herald-Tribune contributed to this report.
http://www.sptimes.com/News/062201/SouthPinellas/Body_raises_specter_o.shtml