Every Town - Houston’s Infamous Ice Box Murders - The City’s Most Disturbing Unsolved Case

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

On a sweltering summer day, Houston police officers responded to a welfare check at a home in the city's neighborhood of Montrose. what they walked into would become nothing short of one of the most disturbing crime scenes ever in American history. 👀 Watch This Episode On Youtube: https://youtu.be/lW5i49mIscU 👁 Check out our movie AN ANGRY BOY for FREE! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvtlOlODQ8g&t=5238s https://tubitv.com/movies/100029672/an-angry-boy International & Other Ways To Watch: https://www.anangryboy.com/ 💀 Free 7 Day Trail on Exclusive Episodes, Podcasts & Perks! https://www.patreon.com/scarymysteries 🎧 Our Other Podcast Scary Mysteries: https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZooEZMoZ421WdsOVJhVkT 👁 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrew.fitzg 👁 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewfitzgerald 👁 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scarymysteriesofficial 👁 X: https://x.com/ScaryMysteries1 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you love true crime, grab your favorite mug and pour yourself a dose of creepy true crime every single morning with a morning cup of murder. This short daily show is the perfect podcast to incorporate into your morning routine because in less than 15 minutes, you'll hear about a true crime that took place on a day's date in history. Each day's dark history lesson will kickstart your morning with intriguing tales of murder, abduction, serial killers, cults, and everything in between.

With over 20 million downloads, Morning Cup of Murder has something for every true crime lover. One listener describes the show as a small package with a powerful punch of crime. Another writes that the show is an absolute delight in the morning. Support yourself a piping hot cup of murder every single morning with Morning Cup of Murder. Find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Everytown has a dark side. On a sweltering summer day in June of 1965, Houston police officers responded to a welfare check at a home in the city's neighborhood of Montrose. The elderly couple who would live there for years hadn't been seen or heard from in a few days,

and so the authorities headed on over to the modest yellow brick house not really expecting anything too out of the ordinary. However, what they walked into would become nothing short of one of the most disturbing crime scenes ever in American history. Hey guys, it's Andrew, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Everytown. But today we're turning back the clock a little bit, but for good reason. Because this case isn't just another unsolved mystery. It's a crime that was ruthless and enshrouded in secrecy, possible government cover-ups, and one very smart and diabolical sun. So let's head on down to Houston and check out the case of the Icebox murders.

Well, tonight's case from the text files is a bizarre murder mystery. One filled with intrigue, allegations of CIA connections, some even have tried to tie it to the Kennedy assassination. It's the case of the Icebox murders. In order to really grasp how someone like Charles Rogers could possibly commit such a gruesome crime and then disappear without a trace, you need to understand who he was at his core. And his father, and one of the victims, Fred, was born on January 19th of 1884 in the aftermath of America's Gilded Age. By the time he reached adulthood, he established himself as a real estate salesman in Houston, Texas. However, underneath that cover of respectability, Fred was also a man who dabbled in some not-so-legal things.

And back then, Texas was still kind of the Wild West, so it makes sense. And Fred worked as a bookie as a side hustle, regularly engaging in illegal gambling operations and various insurance fraud schemes. And those who knew them would later describe Fred as a deep, previous con artist, a man who had a talent for manipulating both strangers and family members alike. On October 8th of 1892, Edwina Iver was born, and she would later become Mrs. Rogers, but like her future husband, she wasn't quite what she appeared to be on the surface. While she maintained the appearance of a well-maintained and proper Houston housewife, Edwina was reportedly just as cunning as Fred when it came to financial manipulation and scheming.

Together, they would create a household that appeared normal enough, but truly harbored some deep dysfunction within. A place where family members didn't interact with one another in a loving and nurturing way. And this was the environment that Charles was born and raised in. Fred and Edwina settled in to Houston's Montrose neighborhood. They would purchase the house at 1815 Driscoll Street. That's where they would spend decades of their lives until the very violent end. As they got older, I'm talking in their 70s and 80s,

Fred could often be seen collecting old newspapers from the neighbor's trash cans. And supposedly he did this to sell them for a little bit of extra cash, so even in his old age, he was always doing some sort of hustle to make some extra money. And Edwina maintained a quiet presence, keeping mostly to herself inside the home, but remained cordial with those in the neighborhood that she saw. Their lifestyle habits may have seemed a bit odd, especially for a former real estate salesman like Fred, but ultimately nothing they did raised any serious alarms.

They were just another quiet, retired couple getting on through life. When their son Charles was born in 1921, or right from the beginning, it was clear that he was a bit different from the other children and not in a bad way. He was quite brilliant, showing exceptional intelligence from an early age, but also withdrawn. socially. While most of the neighborhood kids were playing outside, he chose to remain in his room, reading and studying, just keeping him himself. He was described as being reclusive, reportedly communicated with his parents by way of notes being slipped under the doors. And clearly, that's no proper way for a kid to live, but not all parents are equipped to deal with certain aspects of their children, and so they just let that be the way that they talked. After all, Charles was getting straight A's,

so how bad could things really be? He would go on to pursue higher education at a time when many Americans didn't even finish high school. But growing up without a social life would leave some serious marks on Charles's psyche, creating patterns of behavior that would persist throughout his life. His academic journey started at Texas A&M in 1942, but it wasn't the right fit for him there.

He dropped out and then enrolled at the University of Houston, where he would eventually earn a degree in nuclear physics. And so, that's the type of smarts this guy had. A long time before computers and calculators were there to help assist with such intense and difficult subject matter, well, Charles could seemingly handle it all. The early 1940s were a transformative time in American history, and Rogers would play his part. Like many young men of his generation, he answered the call to serve in World War II, but his role was far from ordinary.

With his technical background and big brain, Rogers didn't end up in the infantry or on a regular Navy vessel. Instead, he became a pilot for the United States Navy, taking to the skies at a time when aerial warfare was revolutionizing combat. And Rogers wasn't just flying planes. He also served in the Office of Naval Intelligence, posting that would later fuel countless theories about his life and ultimately his disappearance.

The ONI, as it was known, was responsible for gathering and analyzing naval intelligence, protecting sensitive military information, and conducting various covert operations. What exactly Rogers did during his time there remains largely unknown, hidden behind a veil of military secrecy and conveniently lost records. What we do know, though, is that during this period, Rogers developed skills that went far beyond what you might expect from a typical naval officer. He became proficient in not just one or two, but seven different languages. After earning his wings and developing a passion for aviation that would stay with him long after the war,

he would later become known for making regular flights between Houston and Austin, a skill that would become particularly interesting to investigators years later when they were trying to figure out how he might have escaped after the murders. But hold that thought because we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. The thing to know for now is that this combination of technical knowledge, intelligence work, and aviation skills would shape Rogers' future in ways no one could have seen coming. His time in the office of naval intelligence would later lead some to speculate about possible connections to various government agencies and covert operations. And did his wartime service set him on a path that would eventually lead to tragedy, or did it simply give him the skills he needed to disappear when the time came.

All accounts, Rogers was a brilliant geologist with a knack for finding gas and oil and gold. When the war was done, Rogers then landed a position that seemed pretty perfect for his skills in education. He became a seismologist for Shell Oil, a job he would hold on to for nine years. By all accounts, he was excellent at his work, and colleagues described him as having an uncanny talent for finding oil, gas, and gold deposits. He was exceptional at this. People that knew him and had worked with him on projects have said that he was a very hard worker and very bright and very good at what he did. But here's where things start to take a darker turn. In 1957, Rogers did something that didn't make sense to him.

anybody. Out of the blue, he just up and quit his job at Shell Oil. No explanation, no warning. He just walked away from a successful career. He was 36 years old at the time, and this would mark the beginning of a pattern of increasingly bizarre behavior. After this, and come the early 1960s, Rogers, had become something of a ghost in his own life. He was living back with his parents, Fred and Edwina and their Houston home, but living with my people, be stretching the definition. Despite sharing the same house, Charles rarely saw his parents, or anybody for that matter. He had developed such reclusive habits that he specifically left the home before dawn every day, who would only come back under the cover of night. To make this whole situation

even more strange, nobody, not even his own parents, knew what Charles did during those long hours away from home. He would slip out, presumably, to go into the city, but was he actually a going to do work? No one could say for sure. Even his cousin Marvin, one of the few people who knew he existed, believed he might be working as an electrician of some sort, but could never say for certain. So a man with a degree in nuclear physics, deep military ties, and a successful career in the oil industry, is now living like a phantom in his parents' house in his early 40s. Most neighbors thought Fred and Edwina lived alone. And Charles had become so good at avoiding human that he had essentially become invisible in his own neighborhood.

And then, he became the strangest part of this whole story. That's the day the killings were uncovered. June 20th, 1965 was Father's Day. The summer heat in Houston was already becoming unbearable. And this would be the last day anyone would see Fred and Edwina Rogers alive. A few days later, Adwina's nephew, Marvin, who had been trying to reach his aunt by phone since Friday, called the police because his calls just went unanswered. Day after day, he dialed their number,

listening to the endless ringing on the other end. He knew something wasn't right. His aunt was typically reliable about answering the phone, and this prolonged silence was completely out of character. So on Wednesday, June 23rd, officers Charles Bullock and L.M. Barta were dispatched to 1815 Driscoll Street for a welfare check. The house sat on a quiet resident. Central Street, lined with trees and well-maintained homes.

The Rogers' house, modest, one-and-a-half-story wood-frame and yellow-brick structure. Officers approached the front door and knocked loudly, but no answer. They knocked again, listening intently for any sound of movement inside, but nothing but silence. Following standard procedure, they decided to walk around the property. That's when they noticed something peculiar at the back of the house. Several large flower pots have been carefully stacked against the back door, creating what appeared to be a makeshift barricade. And the strange blockade and the eerie silence prompted the officers to force their way in.

As they entered, the home felt unnaturally still, the air heavy with something they couldn't quite identify. In the dining room, they found an untouched place setting on the table, food that had been left on it, as if someone had been about to eat but never did, and then left in a hurry. Old newspapers were stacked throughout the house, and dirty dishes were piled in the sink. Signs of life interrupted.

Officer Bullock would later say he couldn't explain what made him do it. Maybe it was instinct, maybe it was his years of experience, or maybe it was just fate. But nothing seemed obviously wrong at first until he made the decision that would reveal the horrifying truth. And he opened the refrigerator. What the officer found inside was hard to look at. Open up a refrigerator and seeing nothing but meat stacked in the refrigerator.

My partner standing next to me made the comment that he thought that somebody had butchered a hog. We didn't know it was a body until we got ready to close the refrigerator and we could see the head down at the bottom of the vegetable bin. The meat wasn't a hog. It was their limbs and pieces of torso. It was far from what the officers had. expected to see, and it was a total nightmare. Investigators concluded the murders actually happened this Sunday before on Father's Day.

Edwina, savagely beaten, shot execution style. Fred Rogers' head crushed with a hammer. Eyes gouged out, emasculated, internal organs flushed down the sewer. And the killer hadn't just murdered them. They had methodically dismembered the bodies in the upstairs bathroom. The level of precision in the dismemberment suggested someone with knowledge of anatomy. Organs have been flushed down the toilet, later on found in the sewer systems. The house had been thoroughly cleaned afterward, with almost no blood being found except for traces leading to Charles' bedroom.

Inside that room, investigators found a blood-stained keyhole saw. The Charles Rogers himself was nowhere to be found. The investigation that followed were revealed disturbing detail. about the Rogers family dynamic. And Charles, despite his brilliant mind and impressive credentials, had apparently been living in a state of constant tension with his folks. The Gardeneers, a couple who would later investigate the case extensively, would uncover evidence suggesting that Fred and Edwina were far from innocent victims.

The same thing that happens with a lot of cases where parents are murdered, it goes back to child abuse. According to their research, Fred had allegedly been abusive to Charles throughout his life, and both parents had been stealing money from their own son. They had reportedly taken out loans in his name and forged his signature on property deeds. The house they lived in actually belonged to Charles, but Edwina had been taking out loans against it and then keeping the money. But Charles never stuck around to tell his side of the story.

This was something he planned from start to finish, and even though it was terrible, he succeeded. This police launched a nationwide manhunt the search for Charles would lead investigators down various paths, each more intriguing than the last. Some believed he had fled to Mexico, using his connections from the oil industry to establish a new life there. Mother's thought he might have used his pilot's license to fly himself to freedom. But with no trace of him ever being found, By 1975, 10 years after the murders, a Houston judge officially declared Charles Rogers legally dead. I don't know about you, but just because you can't find a guy doesn't mean you should let him off the hook for a double murder like this.

Legally dead, all but seals the deal on the case, meaning that, short of Charles, walking into a police station and confessing, no law enforcer was going to go searching for a dead man. and the case might remain open technically, but that's about as cold as it can get, which makes you wonder if perhaps that judge may have had his palm grease for that declaration. Because interestingly, going back to Charles's background in the intelligence world, in 1992 authors John Craig and Philip Rogers published a book called The Man on the Grassy Knoll. In it, it made an extraordinary claim, and Charles Rogers wasn't just a murderer who had disappeared.

He was allegedly a CIA operative who had been involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Charles Rogers was a covert agent of the CIA. He was recruited in 1956 here in Houston. At first as a contract agent, then when he resigned from Shell, he became a full-time operative. According to their theory, Rogers had been one of the three tramps arrested and Dealey Plains,

pause after Kennedy's assassination. The motive for killing his parents was to silence them because we believe that his mother at least found out that he had been involved in the conspiracy to assassinate the president a year and a half before. While these claims might seem far-fetched, certain aspects of Rogers' background made them intriguing. His military intelligence background,

his scientific education, his ability to speak multiple languages, and his mysterious departure from shell oil, all seemed to fit the profile of someone who might have been recruited for covert operations. But the gardener's, who has mentioned spent years investigating the case, came to a different conclusion as to what Charles was up to. Well, they acknowledged that Rogers had connections to CIA contract workers through his work as a seismologist.

They found no evidence that he was a CIA operative himself. But really, if they wanted to, to. The CIA could easily keep that evidence underwrapped, so it's not saying much. Instead, they traced a different path for Rogers saying he fled to Mexico after the murders, aided by powerful friends he had made through his ham radio hobby and his work in the oil and mining industries. The gardeners traced him to Honduras, where they claim he met a gruesome death too. Pickax to death when a business venture went south. Like everything else in this case, these are just theories.

The truth about what happened at Charles Rogers after June 23rd, 1965, remains as mysterious as the man himself. The house where the icebox murders took place stood empty for years afterward. A horror like this isn't easily forgotten or looked past. In the end, it proved too much to get over, and in 1972 it was finally torn down completely. A lot remained vacant until 2000, when condominiums were built on the site. But the mystery of Charles Rogers and the Icebox murders lives on. In an age, well before cell phones, before GPS tracking, before the internet and social media, a highly educated man committed one of the most gruesome murders in Texas history,

then disappeared without a trace. Managed to evade a nationwide manhunt despite having a unique background that should have made him easy to spot. It was Charles Rogers simply a brilliant man who snapped after years of abuse and financial exploitation by his parents? Or was he a covert operative whose folks discovered something they shouldn't have? Or was he something else? We may never know the full truth about Charles or the Icebox murders. The case remains officially unsolved with Rogers as the only suspect. And sometimes the most horrifying monsters aren't made of the things in horror movies,

and they're brilliant, educated people, slipping notes under doors and disappearing before dawn. And for now, the Icebox murders remain one of Houston's most infamous unsolved cases, a dark chapter in the city's history that continues to fascinate and horrify people almost 60 years later. And Charles remains a ghost, person who stepped out of normal life and into legend, even behind only questions, theories, and a refrigerator full of nightmares. So that's it for this week's episode of Everytown. Hope you all enjoyed it. Remember to check us out at patreon.com slash scary mysteries for exclusive podcasts and an entire library

for your need of some more true crime stories. Remember to come back next week for another episode till it's scary, strange, and mysterious stories. Because you never know. Maybe your town will be next.