Ex-Nurse Guilty Of 2 Killings

TOMS RIVER, NEW JERSEY — A tearful jury forewoman announced to a packed courtroom Thursday that former surgical nurse Richard W. Rogers Jr. was guilty of the murders of two men whose decapitated, dismembered remains were found at roadside locations in New Jersey in the early 1990s.
Rogers, 55, of Staten Island, a suspect in three other murders in other states, appeared emotionless and looked at the front of the courtroom as the forewoman read the verdict while crying, dabbing her tears with a tissue and clutching the hand of another juror.
Rogers was convicted of the murders of Thomas Mulcahy, 56, a married, bisexual businessman from Sudbury, Mass., and Anthony Marrero, 44, a gay prostitute from Manhattan. The jury also found Rogers — who had been a nurse for 20 years at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan — guilty of two counts of hindering his own apprehension by dismembering and disposing of the victims' bodies.
He faces up to life in prison with a minimum of 30 years without parole on each of the murders.
"We're just pleased. We feel justice has been done," said Mulcahy's widow, Margaret.
Rogers' attorney, David Ruhnke, said he plans to file an appeal.
The jury reached a verdict at 6 p.m., after deliberating about three hours and 45 minutes following a trial that began Oct. 26 and included a spate of grisly evidence.

Where were men killed?
The verdict came less than an hour after Superior Court Judge James N. Citta answered the panel's question about whether New Jersey had jurisdiction in the matter.
Ruhnke had argued to the jury that it could not convict Rogers of the crimes because the state had not establishedthat they occurred in New Jersey. Citta explained that the law allowed, but did not require, the jury to infer that because the bodies were found in New Jersey, the murders occurred in New Jersey.
Although the state presented strong evidence, including a total of 36 of Rogers' fingerprints on bags of body parts, investigators never established where the murders occurred, and witnesses testified the victims were last seen alive in New York.
Had the jury not convicted Rogers, he could have walked free. Instead, Citta discharged Rogers' $1 million bail and remanded him to the Ocean County Jail pending sentencing in January.
"I feel better that he's not walking the streets," William J. Heisler, chief trial attorney in the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office, said after the verdict.
During pretrial hearings, Citta ruled that evidence of two of the three other murders Rogers is suspected of, although not charged with, could be introduced to the jury because of similarities to the New Jersey case.
Mulcahy, a father of four, went to Manhattan on July 7, 1992, for a business presentation and disappeared the following day. One of the last places he was seen was the Townhouse, a gay bar on Manhattan's EastSide that Rogers was known to frequent.
Mulcahy's body parts were discovered July 10, 1992, at a Transportation Department maintenance yard in Burlington County, and in a trash barrel at the Stafford Forge Rest Area on the Garden State Parkway in Stafford. Rogers left 16 fingerprints on the bags that contained Mulcahy's remains.

Remains in Manchester
Marrero's dismembered body was found in plastic bags on May 10, 1993, on a dirt road in Manchester. Authorities detected two of Rogers' fingerprints and his palm print.
The jury also heard about the murders of Peter Anderson and Michael Sakara.
Anderson, 54, a homosexual banker from Philadelphia, attended a political fund-raiser in Manhattan on May 3, 1991, and later had drinks at the Townhouse, one of the last places he was seen alive. His sexually mutilated body was found May 5, 1991, in a garbage bag in a trash barrel at a rest area on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Lancaster County. Rogers' palm print and 18 of his fingerprints were on the bag.
Sakara, 55, a homosexual typesetter from Manhattan, was last seen alive in the Five Oaks, a gay bar in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, with Rogers on July 30, 1993. His severed head and arms were found the next day in garbage bags in a trash barrel on Route 9W in Haverstraw, Rockland County, N.Y.
On Aug. 8, 1992, more of Sakara's severed remains were found in trash bags nine miles north on Route 9W in Stony Point, Rockland County.
Citta ruled the jury could not hear about Matthew John Pierro, 21, of Bloomfield, found dead on April 10, 1982, off Interstate 4 in Lake Mary, Fla., with a bite mark on his chest that dentists said was made by Rogers.
The jury also did not hear that the fingerprints left at the crime scenes were matched to Rogers in 2001 after the state of Maine went online with an automated fingerprint-identification system.
The panel also did not know that Rogers' fingerprints were on file in Maine since 1973, when he stood trial for the murder of his roommate, Frederick Spencer, in Orono and was acquitted after claiming self-defense.
Spencer had been repeatedly struck on the head with a hammer, smothered with a plastic bag and dumped in a wooded area.
from Asbury Park Press