Criminology - The Amana Hatchet Murders

Episode Date: March 9, 2019

In 1980, Roger Atkison and Rose Burkert were brutally murdered inside an Amana Holiday Inn room in Williamsburg, Iowa. As the details emerged, police realized that Roger and Rose were hundreds of miles from their homes. Not only that but Roger was married and the meeting between Roger and Rose was a romantic tryst. This was a bizarre and baffling case from the very start and remains the same to this day. Police originally thought, based on the hotel room crime scene, that this was a crime of passion. But who knew that Roger and Rose were going to be at that hotel during that time? Were they killed by someone they knew or was this the work of a random killer? Episode correction: The phone# for Iowa County, IA Sheriff's department for anyone with tips or information about this case is [phone] You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology   An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. I'd like to welcome everyone to episode 51 of criminology. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Morph, how are you? It's been a little bit of a shaky week, but you know me, I'm not going to complain. So I'm always ready to get moving and get this episode knocked out.

Shaky as in how? shaky as in one water heater down and it took some struggle and some effort, but we got another one in place and we got some hot water again. So we're good to go. Oh, man. My daughters literally will shut down if there's no hot water. If they can't take their showers, if they can't do their premping, the whole house is turned upside down. My wife for that matter too, but especially my daughters. They're at that stage now where it's a whole ritual. It's, you know, it's a shower. It's makeup. It's all this stuff. And yeah, I feel for you. Yeah, you can't even do the dishes and it's, you know, the showers. It's the whole nine yards. And then not just that, but the water's coming out like 10 degrees because it's so cold. There's no heat at all going to it. So, but we're good to go now. So that's the main thing. Well, good. I am ready to get into this episode because we have a really big head scratcher of a case.

And this is one of the most bizarre cases I've ever researched. Now, I agree with you. You and I have researched a lot of cases. This one ranks very, very high on the list, especially in the bizarre category. But before we get into the case, let's give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Lucy Burton, Charlerelle Bock, Brianna Kramer, Paul Coles, Amy Trammell, Ohio Valley True Crime, Samantha. Crystal Yazzie, James Weiss, and Carolyn Markley.

So a lot of great new support. We really appreciate that, Morp. Yeah, it goes a long way. We say it every episode and it's true. It helps us put this podcast out, keep on going. And if anyone wants to help support the show through Patreon, they can do so by visiting patreon.com slash criminology. And don't forget about CrimeCon coming up in June.

if you still need to buy your badge at crimecon.com, use our promo code. Criminology 19. You'll get 10% off your standard badge price. And then as most people know, our older episodes have moved to Stitcher Premium. So for us, that's seasons one through three back when we were actually doing seasons. There's a lot of good things about Stitcher Premium. You can get access to not just our older episodes, but two episodes from a lot of great podcasts.

There's a lot going on. So you definitely check that out. All right, Morph, let's jump into this case. You know, like we said, this is a very puzzling case that continues to baffle police to this day.

We're talking about the murders of 32-year-old Roger Atkinson and 22-year-old Rose Burkert. They were savagely murdered in 19. in a hotel room in Williamsburg, Iowa, near the Amana colonies. The weapon was very likely a hatchet. The murders became known to some as the Amana murders and to others as the Amana in murders. Roger, who was married at the time, was having an affair with Rose and both lived four hours away in Missouri near Kansas City. The brutality of the crime as well as some of the evidence at

the scene suggested to police that it was a crime of passion and that the couple possibly knew their killer or killers. But the question that has come up a lot is, you know, is it possible that someone that Roger and Rose knew could have found them so far from home and savagely murdered them? You have a secluded hotel, a couple sneaking off for a secret rendezvous, a hatchet is the likely murder weapon. And if that's not enough to paint a picture of this case, there's also more of a mortician's convention going on at the hotel at the time of the murders. Yeah, we mentioned this is bizarre, but anytime you have a true crime case like this, a double

murderer, hatchet murders possibly in a hotel where there's a mortician's convention going on, you can't make this stuff up? No, and if you did, if you wrote it, people would laugh at you. You know, if you wrote this in a book or you wrote this in a screenplay that was made into a movie, they'd probably laugh at it. For Roger's wife, Marcella, finding out that her husband had been so brutally murder was shocking enough. Finding out that Roger was murdered alongside the woman he was cheating on her with

was an especially cruel twist to the kind-hearted and religious woman. The police naturally looked briefly at Marcella as a possible suspect in the double-slaying to make sure that she wasn't a jealous or scorn wife who had murdered her husband and his mistress. But Marcella was quickly ruled out. Despite her late husband's cheating on her, Marcella hasn't stopped looking for answers in this case. she joined us to help explore the many mysterious clues in the case, and you'll hear from her throughout this episode. We were also fortunate enough to be joined by Iowa County Sheriff Rob Rodder, who took us on really more for what is an unprecedented tour of the case, walked us through the investigation from 1980 when the murders first happened right up to 2019. And he shared with us what his team is doing now to try to ID Rose and Rogers Killer or Killers.

So you'll hear from Sheriff Rodder throughout this episode, as well as from a retired investigator with a theory of his own. A lot of times when you hear Williamsburg, historic Williamsburg, Virginia may come to mind. But we're talking about another Williamsburg with historic presence, Williamsburg, Iowa. which sits near Interstate 80, and is about 30 miles west of Iowa City and 90 miles east of Iowa State Capitol, Des Moines. Established in 1854 by Wells native Richard Williams, Williamsburg started out as a Welsh community until the railroad was built in 1884. Today, its roots are primarily Welsh, Irish, and German. Just north of Williamsburg lies the National Historic Landmark, the Ammane Colonies, one of America's longest-Longest, of communal societies.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of tourists flood the villages to see into the past and discover what life was like 150 years ago. The quiet and out of the way, Amanda Colonies, might have been what drew Roger Ackison and Rose Berkert to the area for a romantic getaway in 1980. Little did they know it would be their last. Roger Ackison was born on May 30th, 1948 in St. Joseph, Missouri to James High and Ruth Elizabeth Akison. He served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War.

In 1973, he married Marcella Hatcher. In 1980, Roger was working for General Telephone and Electronics Corporation as a telephone installer slash repairman in Savannah, Missouri. At that time, the company he worked for GTE was the largest independent telephone company in the U.S. Roger and his family lived about 14 miles away in St. Joseph. Rose Berkert was born on May 21st, 1958, in St. Joseph, Missouri. In 1980, she was a nurse trainee at St. Joseph Hospital.

Rose was a single mother of a two-year-old daughter, and they lived in Savannah, the same town that Roger worked in. That June, Rose met Roger when he did telephone work at her home. While no one knows the details of how it started, the two began an affair shortly after that, which continued into the fall. On Monday, September 8, 1980, Roger left home to travel to Cahoga, Missouri for a job assignment with about six of his co-workers. Roger left to work on a job out of town at Cahoka, Missouri, which is, I don't know exactly how far it is from our home of St. Joseph, but he was to work a two-week job through the weekend at Cahoka, Missouri, and when he left to do that job, he was going to be in Missouri.

Cahoka is located about 210 miles northeast of St. Joseph, or St. Joe, as the locals call it. Roger told his wife Marcella that he would be gone for two weeks and wouldn't be home on the weekend. The following Wednesday, September 10th, Rose arrived in Cahoga and stayed in Cahoga, and stayed with Roger in the motel room provided to him by GTE. Two days later on September 12th, the two jumped into Rose's car, a blue four-door 1977 Chevy Malibu with Missouri license plate PJJ101. They drove a couple of hours north to Williamsburg, Iowa to rent a room at the Amana Holiday Inn, which is now a Ramada.

in. When they arrived, they were told that the hotel was fully booked and none of its 156 rooms were available due to a mortician's convention that was being held in the hotel. But the front desk clerk double checked reservations and saw that someone had canceled a reservation for room 260. So at 7.40 p.m. Roger and Rose checked into the hotel. The room was perfect for the couple. It was on the inside of the hotel. It was an isolated room located on the second floor. This was a room that was only accessible from inside the building. At some point that evening, room service was delivered to their room. Reports say the hotel manager called the room to tell Rose and Roger that they needed to move their car, which was in a

handicap zone. But police have never been able to confirm this. Rose called her babysitter to let her know where she was in case of an emergency. However, the babysitter was gone, so the babysitter's husband left the message for her to call Rose when she returned. The babysitter called Rose back when she got home, but there was no answer. Another call was made to the room, but the caller was never identified. The next day, a hotel housekeeper was cleaning rooms at the Holiday Inn. The housekeeper Kieper knocked on the door of room 260 several times. No one answered. She tried to open the door, but it was locked from the inside. So she retrieved a pass key from the hotel manager and opened the door. At first, all she saw were feet and she thought that there were two people sleeping.

But as she got further into the room, she saw blood everywhere. And two. Two, people laying in the bed. These two bodies would later be identified as Roger Ackison and Rose Berger. So this housekeeper ran to get the manager and the manager called the Iowa County Sheriff's Department. Current Iowa County Sheriff Rob Rodder describes the crime scene. It is certain. I think like most murders, there's probably passion, jealousy, whatever, behind

it all. When police arrived at the hotel, they were unprepared for what awaited them. Blood was on the walls, the bed's headboard, and the carpet. I'll give it to you in the eyes of the maid, hotel maid that walked in because she is the one who discovered it. And I can just imagine that that is an image that will be probably burned in her mind for the rest of her days. But as she walked into the room, walked forward, the bed, queen-sized bed. was straight ahead and there is two persons, Roger and Rose. As you're looking at the bed, Rosa B to your left, Roger to the right, Rogers laying face down, roses face up, but mostly covered, and there are massive head wounds to both Roger and Rose and a copious amounts of

blood around the bed, the headboard, everything surrounding. The head's very, very shocking. I can't imagine what it must have been like to walk in that and see that. But that is basically the same. There was no evidence indicating they had been bound or gagged. The back of their heads had been split open by multiple blows from a sharp weapon with an edge that had some weight to it, like a hatchet or a machete. The cuts were two to three inches long, and the skulls were crushed or cracked.

It appeared to police as if the two had been ordered to lie down on their statured, stomachs before being killed. Several of Roger's fingers were severed, most likely from an attempt to protect his head from the blows of the hatchet or machete-type weapon. Sheriff Roder explained why investigators felt that the weapon was most likely a hatcher or machete. Well, it's just basically looking at the types of injuries. So something came down that had some weight to it, or at least had some inertia behind it. The cuts are, in most cases, two to three inches long. And in many cases, when the object came down onto the head, the skulls were cracked and crushed. So it's not a knife. It's something that you can get a little bit of speed or weight behind it. So at this point,

we don't know exactly what it was. It's very likely that it was either a hatchet or a machete or something similar. Sheriff Roder also explained why such a weapon may have been used. This is in a very, very popular holiday inn of the time, and it was a sold-out weekend. And so if somebody were to commit such a murder using a firearm, that probably wouldn't have gone unnoticed. So, you know, in light of the situation, using some type of weapon like this probably makes sense if you're the perpetrator. On the side of the bed Rose was on, a lamp sitting on the nightstand next to the telephone was turned on. The television set was also on. The lamp on the side of the bed where Roger was lying

was turned off. Close to the edge of the bed on Roger's side, there were two wooden chairs that were facing each other. On the floor beneath one chair, there were several receipts. There were also bits of one of those little small hotel bars of soap, almost as if someone had stomped on it and grinded it into the carpet. To the left of the entrance door was a closet with hangers. There were some clothes on the hangers. A suitcase was on the floor next to the bed.

And it appeared as if someone had gone through it, as if they were looking for something in particular. In the bathroom, a single word was written on the back of the bathroom door and soap, and it was visible in the mirror. The word was this, T-H-I-S. Lying on the bathroom floor was a blood-soaked towel that the killer or killers used to wipe blood off of the murder weapon. The murder weapon was never found. There was another tail on the sink counter, along with a box of tissue and a tube of toothpaste. Someone had attempted to wash blood off in the sink. In the bathtub, police discovered toothpaste that had been squeezed from the tube.

There were no signs of forced entry, suggesting the police that Roger or Rose knew their killer or killers and willingly let them into their room. Police believe there was a possibility that at least two people were responsible. Detective Rotter shared his ideas about some of the clues of the crime. crime scene. The first part is it's actually the back of the bathroom door. You can see the message in the mirror, but it's actually the back of the bathroom door. And it simply says the word this. And that's all. And it looks to be written in soap. And I'll talk about this a little bit more with some other things, but I think it's sometimes possible that we're looking at things that may be putting too much into certain aspects of what we see in the scene. So there was that. That was the

message, there's toothpaste for some reason, has been squeezed into the bathtub. I have theories about that. The soap, actually, I wouldn't characterize it as being whittled. What I think it actually is is a motel bar soap, a typical mini bar, and it's been basically stomped into the carpet, into the main room in the carpet there. I don't really think it is whittled. I think it's just fragmented. You can imagine if you took one of those bars and just started stomping on it

with the heel of your shoe, it would just disintegrate, and that's essentially what happened there. And I have a theory on that as to why that is, and I'm trying to put myself in the position of the perpetrator or perpetrators. This is a very messy murder,

and there's absolutely no way that the murder didn't get blood on them. And so they definitely cleaned themselves up in the bathroom, and they use that soap. And if you're thinking about back in 1980, certainly DNA was never an issue, but the one thing you are worried about is fingerprints. And as a murder, you're going to think, gosh, can I leave a fingerprint on a bar of soap? Well, I don't know if you can or you can't, but I'm not going to take it. chance, so I would think the murderer would just destroy the soap, and I think that's why it's destroyed. The toothpaste, I can, I just remember, when I was a child, I remember my, my mother

using toothpaste to clean her jewelry. It would not surprise me if that's why that toothpaste is there. You know, maybe the person was wearing jewelry or wristwatch, what have you, and wanted to clean that up. Again, it's just a theory. I don't know that it really goes to the, to the, to the, to the, to the, the the root of the crime or whether it helps to solve it, but it's possible that maybe we put too much into those things. I think it might be that we put an awful lot into the word this. Is it possible that that wasn't even part of the crime? Is it possible that a person in that room, maybe a child or something wrote on the wall at the previous day? You know, if you come in as the maid and you're cleaning up the room and you open up the door and the door swings to the open position,

And you don't see that. And unless the maid is in there and actually closes the door while they're in the bathroom, they might not see that. Maybe it has something to do with this case. Maybe it doesn't. I don't know how we'll ever know unless we have a confession from somebody at some point. And then you talked about the position of the room and as whether or not conversations took place. I don't put a lot of stock into how the room looked.

And there's a couple reasons for that. certainly the perpetrator of perpetrators could have moved things around, could have even moved the bodies to some degree. I don't think they moved them far, but it might be the difference of whether someone's laying face up or face down. And as far as the furniture, same thing goes. You could certainly move things around. One of the issues that I'm a little bit saddened by is that as we look at the crime scene

photos, and again, I get to armchair quarterback now, and so I have an advantage here. But one of the things that disturbs me in the crime scene photos is that as those photos are taken, things in the room are moving. I see chairs that are not in their same place from one photo to another. I see towels on the floor that moved. I see a ashtray on a table that starts to fill with cigarettes. Roger did not smoke. So I'm afraid that the scene was not well cared for back in that time. and there's a lot of pictures I wish we had that we don't seem to have.

There really aren't as many pictures as I would like. If that scene happened today, we probably have hundreds of pictures. We have less than 100 photos involving the entire crime scene, the outside of the hotel, and then autopsy photos. So there's really not a lot of photos and not as detailed as I'd like to see. So when I hear people fixate on the position of the chairs and whether conversations took place and whether there was more than one or two people,

I think we're reading into the fact that we're relying on where those pieces of furniture are seen in some of the pictures, but I don't consider them to be accurate. And quite frankly, I don't know what the original position of the furniture was because it's not documented. And as I understand it, the crime lab folks that came out had actually had just left another crime scene,

and been working all day. And so before they could return back to their post, they actually had to be diverted to this crime scene. I always sometimes wonder if that doesn't have something to do with why there are fewer pictures. Perhaps they were running low on supplies. You know, this is back in the day when you're using real film. You don't have the ability to digitalize the photography.

So, you know, now we take a picture. We get exactly what we want. If we don't, we take it over again. In those days, you hoped you had what you wanted. wanted. So, you know, there could be something to that that they didn't, they just simply weren't prepared for such a scene. It's hard to say, but it's definitely, the crime scene would be handled quite a bit differently today if we had another crack at it. Sheriff Roder also confirmed that there didn't appear to be any forced entry into the hotel room.

Yeah, that's true. And I don't put a whole lot of importance into that either, because I just, I put myself in the position if I'm staying at a hotel and somebody knocks at the door, I generally open it. So I don't think that a person had to necessarily force their way into a room. I think, especially on that night, if you think about it, this hotel is completely sold out. It's a convention going on. It's very loud in the hallway. There's probably people knocking on doors and, you know, carrying on outside in the hallway for most of the night. And so to have a knock at your door and to open the door, It really isn't that big a deal. So, you know, I know a lot of people want to talk about, well, that proves that the person was known by the victims or whatever.

I can't read any of that into this because I don't think it's unusual to open a hotel room door when somebody knocks at it. I know there's a lot of speculation. Did Rose leave the room? Did she go someplace? It's hard to say, is she simply the one that maybe answered the door when somebody knocked? She threw on a pair of jeans and maybe had a, you know, maybe the bed spread around her or something like that to quickly answer the door. Since there was some confusion about the possibility of Rose being asked to move her car to a different parking spot, we asked Sheriff Roder to clarify that. Well, you know, that is a story that we have heard, and we cannot find anything in any report that indicates that.

So whether that story was true and its documentation was somehow lost, which I kind of doubt because the documentation is very well kept, it's possible that was simply just a theory that somebody proposed at some point and it took on the guise of being fact, but it is not mentioned in any report that that occurred. We also wanted Sheriff Rodder's opinion on whether or not. one person alone would have been able to control and kill both Roger and Rose and about how much time the killer or killers may have spent in the room? I think that is really a huge question. Is it one or two? And I don't have any way to prove one way or the other. I don't think they spent a large amount of time,

but I guess that's all relative to what somebody might think is a large amount of time. I think, I think the murders took place fairly quickly, and I'm just supposing that. And I think some time was spent cleaning up. There's no question that there was cleaning going on in the bathroom, because you have blood spatters in and around the sink that actually had been mixed with water, so they look very pink-like. And then there's blood stains of both Roger and Rose, on some of the towels that are used in the bathroom.

So I think there was some time spent cleaning up. Again, you have to leave that room, and you're going to know that there are going to be people in the hallway, and it's a second floor room, so you have to go through a stairwell to get down and out. Although the trip isn't a very long one to get from the room to the parking lot, it's actually pretty short. Nevertheless, there are people present.

and I have no doubt that there are people present. And so you had to be clean. You couldn't go out in a bloody mess. And so I think some time was spent now, whether that's 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, I don't know. But I think they had the ability to take their time and leave in such a way that they didn't look like they had just killed somebody. After the murders, Iowa County Medical Examiner Dr. Stacey Howell of Amana, determined that Rose and Roger both died of acute blood loss and brain injuries.

How also determined that Roger suffered lacerations to the scalp, skull, and brain. Howl determined that Rose also suffered lacerations to the scalp and skull, but in addition to that, she had a brain contusion. Both victims suffered bleeding under the brain covering. Iowa police identified Roger very quickly. They found his ID in the room and they reached out to the St. Joseph, Missouri Police Department and alerted them to the double murder. St.

Joseph detectives went to Marcella's home to break the news to her, but she wasn't there. Next, they headed to Marcella's parents' house looking for her, but she wasn't there either. Marcella was at a family's home babysitting. Her parents reached out to her and they told her that she needed to come home right away. When police finally spoke to Marcella, they told her that they found Roger's ID on a dead body in Iowa. Marcella was floored. She thought this had to be a mistake because Roger was in Missouri working for GTE. But police were insistent.

it was Roger. They also told her that a young woman named Rose was murdered with him. This was the first time that Marcella learned of the affair. She told police in one of the very early interviews. She had no idea that Roger was having an affair. And she added that she didn't know who this Rose person was at all. When I was told by the detectives that he was killed in Iowa.

Well, how they first told me was Roger's ID was found on a dead body. And I was like, well, somebody stole his ID, Rogers in Missouri. So it can't be Roger in Iowa because he's in Missouri. And they assured me that, no, they were pretty sure that it was Roger and his ID and his body. And I still was in denial because he was in Missouri.

between that time and the next day, I was expecting a phone call from Roger saying, I am okay, you know, this is all just a big mix-up. They told me very little information after that. They just told me basics, and after that, it's like, okay, what's going on? So I gleaned a lot of my information from newspaper articles, but I did hire a private investigator who told me that Roger and Rose had started their affair in June of 1980. Roger was a repairman installer for General Telephone based out of Savannah, Missouri.

He had a job at Rose's House, I understand, out of which the affair started. Not only did I learn on September the 13th, 1980, that my husband of seven years, we had just celebrated our seventh anniversary with a weekend in Branson, Missouri, on September the 1st. But my childhood sweetheart, since I was 15 and a half years old, had been. killed and murdered with another woman. So the murder, the death, and the affair all hit me at one time. I was still in denial. So it takes a while for all of that to sink in. The fact that I never got a phone call from him saying he was okay, the fact that his brother went and identified the body, yes, all of those things then start making reality an impact. I just remember asking a lot of

questions, but not getting very many answers. Like I said, I had to hire a private investigator to give me things, to fill in the gaps of what I felt I needed to know. When did this affair start? You know, who was this person? What kind of person was that? You know, and so it took the private investigator to answer a lot of my questions where they're just absolutely just pretty much quiet on giving you very much information, just enough to get you by. Police questioned Marcella on her whereabouts at the time of the murders. She told police that she was babysitting the 12-year-old daughter of a couple who her and Roger attended church with.

Together, Marcella and Roger had watched the girl before, but only Marcella was doing it this time because of Roger having to work in Missouri. Marcella was cleared of any involvement in the murders. Of course, like in any situation, they say the spouse, The spouse or the person that's the significant other is suspected right off because that's probably the way statistics usually go. But I think I said earlier, we had started together. We had started a two-week babysitting job for a church family. And after he left that Monday, I still remained with, it was primarily a 12-year-old girl that I was babysitting.

she had older brothers college age that were in and out. But basically that was my responsibility plus the upkeeping of the house and the cooking and so on. That was my alibi that I couldn't have been anywhere near, you know, a manna at that time. And plus the fact that I didn't know that he was having an affair with this rose. I thought he was supposed to be in Missouri and not Iowa. I took a lie detector test. I was fingerprinted. I gave a deposition.

Mike, you really have to feel bad for Marcello by this point because she's got the shocking news that her husband is murdered. And on top of it, she finds out through that that he was murdered alongside a woman he was having an affair with. And then to add insult to injury, the police have to rule her out as being the killer. Yeah, Morph, I mean, there's no doubt. This would be a rough point in anyone's life. Number one, you find out that your spouse is dead has been murdered, in fact. But then number two, you find out that your spouse was having an affair. And the person that he was having the affair with was murdered alongside him.

All of that news very tough to take. But as you know, as the audience knows, as everyone knows, in these times, types of cases, often the police have to, very early on, look at the spouse, the boyfriend, girlfriend, the significant other, and rule them out. So on top of all that Marcella is dealing with, she has to essentially more proof to police that she didn't kill her husband and his mistress. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer.

For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do but had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. In the days following the murders, state law enforcement officials questioned over 400 people, mostly getting. and employees at the hotel, that was no small task. We mentioned it early on. There was a morticians convention going on at the hotel. Some of the various guests at the hotel had come from all over the United States.

Police had to reach out to guests who lived in California, Wisconsin. I mean, you name it. In addition to trying to question all these people that had stayed at the hotel, tell, the Iowa division of criminal investigation put out a plea to anyone driving in the vicinity of the holiday in that Friday night or early Saturday morning. They wanted to know if anyone saw anything out of the ordinary, like a hitchhiker or an unusual car in the area, but this plea for tips led nowhere. As the investigation continued, police learned of similar crimes elsewhere in Iowa and Illinois to the east. About three months prior to Rogers and

Roses murders on June 25, 1980, Peoria, Illinois salesman William Ross Kyle was found dead in his room at the Sheridan Motor Inn at the intersection of East Main Street and Interstate 74. He had been killed with a dozen blows from a sharp, heavy object to his head, neck, and shoulders. Kyle was slumped face down across the bed, his knees on the floor, and his head covered with a blanket. The murder weapon was believed to be a hatchet or something similar to a hatchet. While no arrest have ever been made in that case, Galsberg Police believe a transient named Remando Esperanza was responsible for Kyle's murder. Asperaza died from liver cancer in 1983. Years later, police attempted to test DNA from the crime scene against his that was on file

the Veterans Hospital he stayed at prior to his death, but the sample had disintegrated and was unusable. Iowa detectives investigating the Amanda murders drove to Galesburg to speak with the local detectives there. They determined that the cases were not related. Five days after Roger and Rose were killed, the body of 17-year-old Sandra Joe Pittman was found at a Highway 30 rest area in Cedar County, one mile west of Clarence, Iowa. This is about six. 65 miles northeast of Williamsburg, an autopsy concluded that the young woman died from blows to the head from a heavy object, like a claw hammer or crowbar. The time of death was estimated around sometime late Tuesday the 16th or early Wednesday between midnight and 7 a.m. The autopsy report indicated the victim may also have been strangled, but was not a.m.

sexually assaulted. Investigators believed that the girl was killed somewhere else and then dumped at the rest area. Ten years later in 1990, 44-year-old Dean Ray Turney was arrested and charged with Sandra Joe Pittman's murder. So this was 10 years later. And the arrest of Turney came after he gave a confession that he murdered Sandra Joe Pitman. But then they went to trial. At the first trial, the jury deadlocked on Turney's guilt, voting seven to five for acquittal. But they could not come to a consensus. And they gave up before ever reaching a unanimous verdict. At a second trial in 2000, jury members found Turney not guilty of Sandra Joe Pitman's murder. And her murder remains unsolved to this day. So, more than,

if I think a couple of things about this case, right? Sandra Joe Pittman, 17 years old, horrible the way that she was killed. She lost her life. But this was pretty close in both time and distance to the murders of Roger and Rose. And I think this is a stretch of the country that doesn't experience a whole lot of murders such as this. I think this was out of the norm for them. And I think police probably saw the cases being so close together and not far apart in time or distance. And just trying to explore all possibilities wanted to make sure that this her murderer wasn't somehow connected to roses and Rogers. And police apparently looked into the case to see if there might be connection. But as far as they could tell, there was none.

But not to get sidetracked morph, but, you know, this case of a Sanders-Joe Pipp. is pretty interesting. You know, this man, Dean Ray Turney, he confessed but was found not guilty. Now, what we didn't go into, and we obviously, we don't have time to go into all the details of her case and the trial and all that. But in a nutshell, Turney's defense argued that his confessions weren't credible. He had been hospitalized many times for psychiatric reasons. and he had given a lot of different varying accounts of how the murder took place.

In one account, it was three guys and he watched them. So it's strange that someone would confess and a jury would find them not guilty, but there were definitely factors around it. A few years later, in 1983, another double murder would occur in Iowa, and the similarities between this double murder and Rogers and Rose's case, are worth mentioning. The 1983 double murder case has come to be known as the Copper Dollar Ranch murders in Newton, Iowa. On March 3rd, 1983, 17-year-old Melissa Gregory, and her boyfriend, 20-year-old Stephen Fisher, were found bludgeon to death at the Copper Dollar Ranch, located just outside

of Newton, and only about 60 miles west of Williamsburg, where the Amanda murders happened. Like Roger Ackison, Stephen Fisher was married to another woman. although they were separated at the time of the murders. Stephen's body was found lying face down on the ground near the barn and a camper. He was clothed only in blue jeans and covered in blood. Melissa was found inside a trailer. Some reports say she was nude. Due to the brutality of the murders, police called it a crime of passion.

In 2014, Stephen Fisher's wife was arrested for the murders of Stephen and Melissa, but a jury found her not guilty. So while these other murders definitely caught the attention, attention of investigators in the murder case of Roger and Rose, they continued to look at suspects that they felt might be tied to Roger or Rose in some way. And there were a few suspects that emerged. One was Rose's ex-boyfriend, Danny Burton. Prior to her murder, Rose obtained a restraining order against Danny Burton and told police that if, anything happened to her, they should look at him. She even bought a dog for protection only to come

home one day and find the dog dead hanging from a tree. Burton worked for what was then Globe Union, now called Johnson Controls, but Burton had an alibi. Two men that he worked for plus his punched time card confirmed that he was working at the time of the killings. He was also given a polygraph test and passed, but even so. More if you know, it was hard for police to not like this guy as a suspect. Yeah, and Sheriff Rodder definitely confirms that for us. Well, of course, hindsight is 2020, and so I can armchair quarterback this all day long and point out mistakes that I think were made, but would not have been considered mistakes at the time. I think one of the biggest setbacks in this case was the so-called target-locking on a suspect that, in my opinion, really had nothing to do with the crime at all.

But it looked like a really good suspect at the time, and I understand why they put so much time and attention into it. It was Danny Burton, was the former boyfriend and I believe engaged to. Rose Berkert. There was a time when he was considered to be stalking Rose, and Rose had made mention to law enforcement in the St. Joe's area that if anything ever happened to her, that it would be Danny that did it. Well, that's pretty tough not to target lock on. So I don't, I don't mean to badmouth what was done. But if you look at the investigation, easily about the first year of that investigation really does lock on Danny Burton. and looking at everything we know about Danny Burton, his whereabouts, things that he was doing at the time,

I don't think there's any chance in the world that Danny Burton committed this crime, but again, I understand why they were looking at him. Another suspect in the case was Marcella Eckerson's own father, Floyd Hatcher. There's been a theory that Floyd learned about Roger's affair with Rose and murder the couple. However, Marcella doesn't necessarily believe this theory, because Floyd himself had several affairs during his marriage to her mother. But Marcella admittedly was disturbed by some things that her father told her following the murders. I thought my father act very strange when it all happened,

and I say strange by when my mother and my dad and I went to view Roger's body for the first time at the funeral home, before we went, my dad said, now don't cry. Don't cry. and I didn't cry. And I don't know if I even cried at the funeral. And I thought that was such an odd statement. Why, I mean, my first reaction would be to cry. You know, my gosh, I've been through a horrible thing.

But I just didn't know why, and I never asked him, you know, why did you say that, Dad? There's been rumors that he acted strange during the funeral. I have no recollection of that. Dad had asked me one time when I was over there and was visiting, he asked me, if he said, well, where's Roger? And I said, he's working late. And my dad said, well, how do you know that? And I got mad about it and I left.

And so I never questioned him on that because I thought, you know, he's just, why is he saying that? And he has no reason to say that. So there were just some things along the line that always made me wonder, you know, what, you know, what's going on? But I don't know. My dad was an alcoholic, but I would not have ever have imagined him doing. something like that. He was, you know, not an easy, not an easy person to get along with when he was

drunk, was never abusive to me or my mom when I was home. But I, you know, I question as his alcoholism progressed over the years, what, what could he be capable of? But that's just my guessing because my dad never showed any violence towards me or my mom when I was growing up or not in my later years did he show violence towards me. And I, don't know that he was ever violent towards anyone. Marcella's father wasn't the only family member who warned an attention as a possible suspect in the murders. Marcella's uncle Charles Hatcher, Floyd's brother, was a serial killer, and after the murders,

police looked into him as a possible suspect. In 1983, while awaiting trial for murder, Hatcher confessed to killing 16 people, mostly children and young men, between 1969 and 1982. He was sentenced to life in prison. I think it's important that we look at what Hatcher was doing in 1980, when Rose and Roger were murdered. In May, Hatcher was sent to a mental facility after attempted murder charges against him were dropped.

Hatcher had assaulted and stabbed the seven-year-old boy. The boy survived the attack. Two months later, Hatcher was sent back to the mental facility for another assault, but escaped in September 1980, the same month that Roger and Rose were murdered. Police later interviewed Hatcher, and they do not believe he was involved in the murders. My mom said growing up that my uncle had watched me as a child or a small child, and there never was anything that he showed towards me that she knows of

that would have indicated he would lead the life that he had eventually ended up leading. He had a horrible background of growing up that the children, I don't feel, got the nurturing that they needed. but I'm not to say that that excuses his behavior, not by any means, but it kind of explains maybe why he ended up doing what he did. But of course, there's other people that are raised like that, and they don't end up. So, you know, I don't know what causes people to do what they do. But the last recollection I have of my uncle Charles was at my grandmother's funeral, and I'm going to say I was somewhere between the ages of 10 and 12.

And it's stuck in my mind so vividly, that's the only thing I remember about my grandmother. grandma's funeral or anything about that is that he was in handcuffs at her funeral. And I just, you know, it's just kind of sad that you're at your mom's funeral and you're in handcuffs. So that's the last time I remember seeing the man. He led a life of horrible crime. He was a child pedophile. He was a murderer. And he was a serial killer.

And there's been a book written about him that a newspaper reporter man, Terry Ganey, wrote from St. Louis Dispatch, I believe was his newspaper. But I don't think he had anything to do with Roger's death. For one thing, I had never had any contact with him since I was a child. Police also considered the possibility that a hotel bartender was involved in the murders. And this whole thing's a little murky. It's not completely clear. But there are unconfirmed reports that Rose may have had an argument with this hotel bartender.

on the night of the murder. It has been alleged that after the murders, this bartender snatched up his paycheck and took off. By the time authorities found him, he had enlisted in the military and was already in Germany. At the time, authorities were doubtful of his involvement. I think in large part because they just felt so strongly that these murders were motivated by jealousy.

They were motivated by revenge. We talked about it more of a crime of passion. That's what police thought they had here. And to go further into that, police determined that Rogers' affair with Rose was not the only affair that he had. He had several affairs while he was married to Marcella. So there's another theory out there,

that because of his multiple affairs, maybe there was another woman that he was involved with, or somebody connected with that woman, a husband, something like that, that murdered both Roger and Rose. There was another theory that perhaps one of Roger's co-workers, who was with him in Cahoka, murdered the couple. The GTE crew were known to carry hatchets to clear away grass. Police felt that if Rose and Roger were killed by someone they knew, that the killer of killers would have had to know that Roger and Rose were first in Cahoga and then in Williamsburg. Police interviewed all six of Roger's co-workers, but none of them were ever arrested. There was a disturbing incident reported about a man that may have been connected to Savannah, Missouri, where Rose lived.

And he may have been in a man of Iowa when she was killed. This man, who was a hired hand, worked on a farm there Rose's house in Savannah, A Savannah woman told police that this hired hand had broken into her house and stood over her bed while she was sleeping at least once. And like I said, this man was reportedly in the Amana area at the time of the murders. But there was nothing solid connecting him to the case. Recently, a retired St. Joseph detective who worked a case back then and prefers to stay anonymous spoke with us and shared a little bit about a favorite suspect of his. The detective got some information about someone that he thought was a very interesting suspect. And as it turned out, the person was someone who was indeed very close to Rose.

It was in the winter of 2015. I get a call from a supervisor up in the IBI and he wasn't enough I'd checked out, if I'd been with them when they took a statement from the victims, Rose's stepbrother. And I said, I don't think so. I didn't get to go on everyone in investigations because there was two other guys in the crimes against persons unit, the Lieutenant Milenbacher and Detective Jim Wright. They did a lot of their running and stuff, and I don't remember ever talking to this stepbrother.

But anyhow, they said there was. Iveyi guy was flying back from California, and he was on an airplane or jet plane with a scientist. He's a professor from up there at the university. I'm at the Iowa State. And he asked him, he says, did you ever solve that double homicide up in the man of colonies? And I think that an investigator says, I don't think so. He said, let me tell you what I know. he said, I was up there at the college

and university and he said, this guy came up from St. Joe would have been Rose's stepbrother and he was up there he came up to visit me and he was a horticologist

and he said that he was going to go down and see his sister, step sister down in the Mata College. So he left and he come back that night all wild and crazy and couldn't talk or nothing

and then professors couldn't get nothing out of him. So the next morning, he said, did you get to see your step-sister? He said, well, she was murdered down there in the Mata Collies. When they showed his pictures of the crime scene, they showed us this bloody towel that the suspect had wiped off a murder weapon with. It kind of looked like a tomahawk. And when they theorized it was a realtor. a ripper's tool.

Well, the day was talking to Marcella, and Rick looked up what a mock was. A horocologist used, and that was a similar type weapon that matched that

bloody towel. And he would have kept it because he'd been a horticologist, a flyer person. And so when he tells him about this professor, They were all excited to go up there to Elk City, Minnesota to talk to him. And they were up there. They found that he'd been dead for two years.

And I think that's the reason the professor finally opened up about it. I mean, why wait so many years to tell him about it? This IBI guy told me he gave a statement, said he hadn't seen his stepsister for over a month prior to a homicide. That's what his statement said. It's not known to what extent Rose's stepbrother was looked at, but he was someone close to one of the victims, as police always suspected the killer would be. And his job as a horticulturist required him to work with a hatchet-like tool. So I don't know more.

This is an interesting possibility, especially when you consider that the person who brought up Rose's stepbrother as a suspect, waited until he died. Perhaps so as to not face any retribution. And as you mentioned, he was someone that was close to Rose. And when you factor in the detail that he carried a tool that was similar to the murder weapon, it does seem like it's a, it's a possibility that he could be the one. In recent years, Sheriff Rodder, his sergeant and an investigator from the Iowa Bureau of investigation pulled out all of the evidence. They were looking for any DNA, any evidence that contained DNA of the killer or killers. The bed, the nightstand, the headboard from the bathroom, the pieces of soap, the tooth face,

basically everything that was brought in by the victims was taken as evidence at the time. and to this date we still hold really anything that had blood spatter on it, anything that could have been likely touched by the suspects we have. The only thing that was returned were some of the personal effects of Raj and Rose, and quite frankly, that doesn't please me. I would like to say that we have everything that was in that room, but for some reason at that time, they did get, back the personal effects. I'm not saying that there's anything that would have been

available to us. But, you know, murder scenes, crime scenes, you have to do what you have to do to preserve it. You only have one chance to do it and one chance to do it right. And so getting rid of things is not a good idea. I certainly wouldn't do it today. But irregardless, we have most of what I would consider to be an important people. piece of evidence, and that is the blood evidence and, like I say, the towels and things that were in the bathroom. So back in 2015, Sergeant Sauerbray, myself, and one of the agents from the DCI, Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, we pulled out all of the evidence that we have here.

And I will say this, while I might critique some of the things that the original investigators did, again being the armchair quarterback, and how easy is that. They did them a fantastic job in preserving evidence. The evidence they had was well, well sealed, cared for, stored properly. It's really a time capsule from that case. And so that really served us very well. And of course, since we're looking at this through a different lens now, and that's the lens of DNA evidence, We looked through that material trying to find where a logical place would be that we might find the DNA of the murderer or murderers. And we think we actually have accomplished that. If you imagine walking into the bathroom after you've just murdered two people in the bloody method that you did,

you're going to see yourself in the mirror and you're going to be probably not. too fond of the mess that you now are. You have to be covered with blood spatter. It's got to be all over you. And so you're going to start cleaning yourself up. And one of the things that we saw was next to the sink is a towel. And that towel was sent along with several other items to check for DNA. And we actually were able to find a third DNA mixed into the DNA of both Roger and Rose. There were blood evidence, there is a third DNA that is not identified exactly as to what it is. It is certainly male DNA. It is not blood or semen. It's probably sweat, saliva, something like that. And it is dispersed in among the DNA of Roger and Rose. So we have high hopes that that is our killer. But it's kind of like the Cinderella. We have the slip. but we don't know who it fits. And we have been going through at least the living suspects that are still with us,

trying to identify that. We've had a lot of luck. People actually are quite, in most cases, very happy to help us in supply DNA. And we have not at this point had a match. But we continue to do that. And that is basically the focus of our case today is trying to. to find out whose DNA that belongs to. We wanted to know if there was enough DNA

and if the sample was good enough to perhaps be used in Jedmatch to start tracking the DNA donor's family tree. Yes. In fact, we actually started down that road here some time ago. I really didn't know what to think about it as to whether it would be something that would have been handy in our case or not. Of course, anything is better than nothing. And then about a few months into taking that route, our friends over in Cedar Rapids, just not that far away from where we're at right now,

solved a case that's about the same age, I believe, 1979 using familial DNA. And so when I saw that, read about it, talked to some of the investigators, I knew that we're going down the right road. So that is where we're focused right now. I hope we have a success story like they did. it certainly is a great thing to see that they were able to solve that and that that

kind of evidence can be helpful of course they don't have a they haven't gotten to trial yet so it'll be interesting to see how that trial unfolds as it does they obviously did make an arrest so it gives us hope that there is a way to solve this

and I think that might be the way to do it I try to keep in contact with the family on both sides it's an open wound for them. I know a lot of the family has passed away and went to their graves not knowing what happened, but there's certainly plenty of people still out there that have this hanging over them for their entire lives at this point now.

And I really like to get it solved for them and give some kind of closure. I don't say that that will give a complete closure, but knowing that maybe somebody pays for the crime or even if it's somebody that's not with us anymore. And that's one of the issues, of course, with an old case like this is some of your suspects are no longer alive. But that doesn't necessarily mean we can't identify them as the culprit. And whether we identify somebody that's still alive and can stand trial or somebody who's passed on,

either way, we want to find out who that is. Tammy Berkman of Savannah, Missouri, was Rose Berkert's best friend. She met Rose in high school, and they later became roommates and co-workers. Rose was Tammy's maid of honor at her wedding. After Rose's murder, Tammy became obsessed with solving it and finding out what happened to her best friend. Tammy has spent years gathering articles, files, and information about the case. She also created a Facebook page called Justice for Rosie. Roger's wife Marcella remarried, and is now Marcella Shad.

She still resides in the St. Joe, Missouri area and has started writing a book about the murders from her perspective as the victim's wife. Last year, she started gathering all the information she had on the murders for the book. As of now, no publishing date has been set. Marcella would very much like to see her husband's murder Saul and hopes to inspire others with her book. She was quoted as saying, When he was first killed, I thought, if someone would just have come to me and said, you're going to be okay.

I've been through this. It's going to be hard, but you'll make it through. So that's one of my purposes is to inspire others to see if they can get through anything with God's help. Marcella told us how this case has weighed on her all these years. Just the fact of not knowing, not knowing who and why has been a very big burden to carry over the years. At first, after it was all out and kind of was in the background, because it was in the press and it was up front quite a bit. I kind of wanted to remove myself from the situation and didn't want people to know what I had been through because I just,

felt that was an abatross around my neck, you know, this, this horrible thing that has happened. But as I've gotten older, I feel like I want to get the word out because there is somebody somewhere that knows something. There's, there's this puzzle that has all these pieces that are floating around and one person has the key piece to this puzzle that could just open the whole thing. And so that is my hope and goal that the more it's talked about, the more the word we get out that somebody that knows something very important will come forward and say what they know to help get this solved. Now, I'd like to point out that there's never going to be justice in this situation. Somebody's brother, husband, wife, sister, you know, somebody's relative was taken

away and that can't be undone. But I think all of our families that are involved in this would like to have closure. Roger Atkinson and Rose Berger are buried separately in St. Joseph's Memorial Park Cemetery. It's unclear where Rose's daughter is today, but Tammy Berkman said on a post on her Facebook page that her daughter wasn't actively looking for her mother's killer or killers. All right, Morve, as we're wrapping this up, I think this is a good time for you and I to dissect this case a little bit. We've mentioned it up front. It's very bizarre. there is a lot to take in.

I think for us, just like with the, for the police, there's a lot of things that we have to explore. First of all, the crime scene definitely seems like a crime of passion. You have savage bludgeoning, gashing with a hatchet-like weapon. And that tends to indicate a crime of passion, which is likely someone that knew Rose or Roger. but then we also have to factor in that they were so far from home and they weren't even in the same state where Roger was supposed to be. So they had gone at the last second to this hotel and almost couldn't get a room there until the last second.

So for it to be someone that knew them, they would have had to have been following Roger and Rose for quite a distance. So that's where I land on the crime of passion angle. what you just said, Morve, the plans were chaotic, right? And those last, that last day or the day before, decisions were made kind of on the fly. So how many people could have known that Roger and Rose were going to be at the Amana Inn that night? I think the number is very small. I think it's also important to look at the layout of the hotel. As we said, it was on a second floor on the innermost section of the hotel. So it was only accessible from inside the hotel. So it would seem hard for a stranger to walking off the street and just get into their room.

So all these things that we're saying, I think kind of casts some doubt, right, as to this crime of passion angle, meaning somebody that really knew them, somebody that knew what they were doing, somebody that was upset about what they were doing. I just think more for me, it seems much more likely that this was somebody that saw them either at the hotel or, you know, right before getting to the hotel and followed them there. I don't know. I'm just leaning towards that. But for that to be true, what's the motive? Right. And again, I think this is why the police leaned towards the crime of passion angle because that gives a clear motive. Somebody was upset about the fact that Roger and Rose were doing what they were doing.

If you take that away, what you're left with is essentially a stranger deciding to kill them for what reason? Because they wanted to kill them. That's it. That's all you have. The problem is you and I have researched hundreds, I don't know, maybe a thousand cases, I don't know how many we've researched, it happens, right? We know that there are and have been a lot of serial killers who selected victims completely at random. If this had happened in one of their hometowns, I could definitely buy into the crime of passion, and it would seem like that would be the most logical case, but because it happened 250 miles away, four hours drive, essentially away, that makes me think that it could be a stranger. And then to your point, what's the motive?

Well, and as we know, right, those type of murders, very difficult to salt. Stranger, no connection to the victims, selected completely randomly, very difficult to solve. solve those cases. And you heard the sheriff talk about it in one of the clips. This theory that it was a crime of passion definitely led the authorities down a certain path, right, to look at certain people and it may have hurt them somewhat in their investigation of other suspects that they, I don't want to say they ruled them out more, but maybe they did based on the fact that they didn't have the connection that would have fit the crimes of passion profile. But there's no doubt. This is, like we said, this is a bizarre, very mysterious case. It has baffled the authorities

for what? Morph going on 40 years? Next year, it'll be 40 years, right? Yeah, it's 40 years, and that's a long time to go for the families and for police not to have any answers. Again, this is one of those cases where because of the mystery, and you touched on the DNA a little bit, hopefully this could be one of those cases where DNA helps zero in on the killer and we find out who it is. We find out their connection. I want that because I'm stumped. And I don't like to be stumped. I want to know the answers.

I'd love to have a jed match. I'd love to have a paraben-type solution here. Hopefully that happens. If anyone has information about the murders of Roger Ackison or Rose Berkert, please call the Iowa County Sheriff's Department at 608-935-5827. Thanks for writing and research assistance goes out to Debbie from True Crime Diva.com, and special thanks to Marcella Schatt and Iowa County Sheriff Rob Rodder for participating in this episode.

episode. By the way, we had so much in-depth discussion with Marcella and Sheriff Rodder to put this episode together that there's just no way to fit the entire interviews with both of them into a single episode. So we're going to put those interviews in their entirety onto our Patreon feed. So if you're a Patreon supporter, be sure to look out for those. If you like to show and you haven't done so yet, please take a minute, go out, give us a five-star rating. That goes a long way towards helping others find the podcast. And as always, we're active on social media. If you want to reach out to us, we're always happy to hear from you.

You can find us on Twitter with the handle Criminology Pod or on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast. You can also join our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans. All right, Morf, that is it for another episode of Criminology. I like that one. I like the, and it's hard to say you like it, right? I'm fascinated by it. obviously there were victims.

There were a lot of victims. People lost their lives. Other people's lives were shattered because of the murders. But there's no doubt. To me, it's a fascinating case. And we'll be back with you next Saturday for an all new episode of criminology, looking to bring you another fascinating case, Morf, right? That's what we do.

It's what we try to do. We've got to keep people coming back. Keep them interested. So this is Mike. And we will talk to you next Saturday. Take care, everyone.