Nurse Found Guilty Of Dismembering Gay Men

TOMS RIVER, NEW JERSEY - A former nurse has been convicted of murdering two men whose body parts were dumped along New Jersey highways more than a decade ago.
Richard W. Rogers Jr., 55, of Staten Island, N.Y., faces up to life in prison and at least 30 years without parole on each murder count when sentenced Jan. 26. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.
Rogers, a surgical nurse for 20 years at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, was also convicted of two counts of hindering apprehension by dismembering and disposing of the bodies of Thomas Mulcahy, 56, a businessman from Sudbury, Mass., and Anthony Marrero, 44, a Manhattan prostitute.
"We're just pleased," Mulcahy's widow, Margaret, said after the verdict Thursday in state Superior Court. "We feel justice has been done."
Rogers' attorney, David Ruhnke, said he planned to appeal. He had argued that prosecutors charged the wrong person. He had also tried to convince the jury that it could not convict Rogers of the crimes because the state had not proved they occurred in New Jersey.
But Judge James Citta ruled the law allowed the jury to infer that because the bodies were found in New Jersey, the murders occurred in New Jersey.
"I feel better that he's not walking the streets," Assistant Prosecutor William J. Heisler said after the verdict.
Mulcahy was in New York on July 7, 1992, for a business meeting and disappeared the next day. One of the last places he was seen was the Townhouse, a gay bar that Rogers was known to frequent.
Mulcahy's dismembered parts were discovered July 10, 1992, at a state Department of Transportation maintenance yard in Burlington County and in a trash barrel at the Stafford Forge Rest Area on the Garden State Parkway. Sixteen of Rogers' fingerprints were found on the bags containing Mulcahy's remains.
Marrero's dismembered body was found in plastic bags on May 10, 1993, near a road in Manchester. Two of Rogers' fingerprints and his palm print were on those bags.
The big break in the case came May 28, 2001, when Maine authorities, who had gone online with an automated fingerprint identification system, matched Rogers' prints to those on the bags.
His fingerprints were on file in Maine because he had been tried in November 1973 after his graduate-school roommate at the University of Maine, Frederick Spencer, was beaten to death with a hammer. Claiming self-defense, Rogers was acquitted.
from The Philadelphia Inquirer