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Welcome to Florida:
Don't Go Near the Water
The Tampa Bay
Murders
By Bob Andelman
(Originally published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer,
Orlando Sentinel, and Weekly Planet)
Kristal Sue Mays held her breath and listened. The private investigator
said he had found her father, yet the news was not good. Oh,
he was alive. But the man who walked out on her mother, herself
and her sister in Bond Hill, Ohio, in 1970 when Kristal was 7
was now serving time in a Florida state prison.
That wouldn't surprise her mother. She refused to tell her two
daughters anything about the man who fathered them, believing
he would bring nothing but tragedy and heartbreak to their doorstep.
Mother was right.
Finding her father that day in 1986 did nothing to improve the
quality of Kristal's life. She was never as sure of that as she
was three years later, in November 1989, as she ran into the
bathroom of his Sharonville, Ohio, motel room, locked the door
and wanted to throw up. Her father, Oba Chandler, in a moment
of rare repentance, was confessing to Kristal and her husband,
Rick, how he spent his recent summer vacation in Tampa Bay, Florida.
On the Farm
Joan and Hal Rogers
were Willshire, Ohio, dairy farmers who married right after high
school. "They made a good match," wrote Christopher
Evans in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "Hal, a self-described
loner who preferred hard work to hanging out, and Jo, a popular
Pep Clubber who made friends like Hal made money."
The Rogers eventually bought his parents' 200-acre farm, where
Michelle and Christe were born and raised. Hal's younger brother,
John, an ex-Marine, lived in a trailer on the property and worked
side-by-side with his brother. Before and after school each day,
the girls were paid to milk the cows. Joan worked nights at a
distribution warehouse just over the state line in Indiana, then
she'd come home and help with the milking.
This was a family that worked hard, every day.
Beyond work, Michelle endured unspeakable late-night horrors.
Starting when she turned 14, the older Rogers daughter was sadistically
sexually assaulted repeatedly by her Uncle John. The crimes were
discovered when police found a videotape in Rogers' briefcase
showing a masked man raping a woman in his trailer. Compromising
photographs of Michelle were also found. John Rogers was arrested
and charged with seven counts of rape three against Michelle.
A plea bargain led to all but one of the charges including all
three relating to Michelle being dropped. John Rogers never admitted
guilt but was sentenced to a 7 to 25 years in prison after pleading
not guilty by reason of insanity.
But confounding the Willshire community and especially the Rogers
women, Hal Rogers bailed his brother out when the charges were
first filed in March 1988 and brought John back to the farm.
No one ever forgave Hal for being so completely insensitive to
his daughter.
* * *
On May 26, 1989, the women
left Hal behind at the farm for a dream vacation in Florida.
The girls Michelle, 17, and Christe, 14 were finally old enough
for Joan, 37, to enjoy their company as adult companions and
she looked forward to spending time with her daughters. It was
also a chance for Michelle to get past the trauma of the assaults.
The Rogers women visited as many attractions as they could Walt
Disney World, Sea World and Silver Springs. They shot several
rolls of film with their Nikon One Touch camera, then headed
west for the beaches of west central Florida.
They left Disney World early in the morning on Thursday, June
1, and drove west to Tampa, where they intended to check into
the Days Inn Rocky Point and hit the Gulf beaches. Somewhere
along the way, Joan Rogers got lost. She asked a stranger for
directions at an interstate exit. He wrote them down over the
map on a Clearwater Beach brochure "Boyscout Columbus"
"Days Inn Rt 60 Courtney Causeway" and drew a line
from I-275 to the hotel.
Thanks to the help, they found the motel and checked in. Either
when they got the directions or in a subsequent call to the motel,
the stranger invited the family to go out on his boat for a pleasure
cruise. On Days Inn stationery, Joan wrote the directions from
their motel to the boat ramp where they would meet him, two miles
away, and noted the description of the stranger's boat "blue
W/Wht." Excited about the prospects of a sunset cruise,
the women promised to meet the affable stranger after they checked
in.
Settling in their room, Michelle called her boyfriend back home
in Ohio. Joan called the general information number at Busch
Gardens amusement park for hours and prices. They changed into
bathing suits and left to meet the generous stranger at the boat
ramp. His directions were perfect.
The man told Joan to take the Courtney Campbell Parkway west
from the motel about two miles and turn right at the last light
before a bridge. She'd see the boat ramp when they arrived.
Joan parked her blue, two-door Oldsmobile Calais near the ramp
and she and the girls boarded the man's boat.
Three days later a boater discovered Michelle Rogers floating
in the waters of Tampa Bay, her mouth gagged with silver duct
tape, her feet and arms bound behind her back with yellow nylon
rope and weighted with concrete blocks. Joan and Christe were
found not long after in the same condition.
Cause of death was officially asphyxia suffocation because the
medical examiner could not determine if the women were thrown
overboard while still alive. There were no other signs of trauma,
suggesting their tormentor used the threat of force rather than
actual force to control them. The bodies were so decomposed that
the medical examiner could not determine if they were sexually
assaulted.
Experts told police that the tides in Tampa Bay form a regular
pattern, but that it would be extremely difficult to determine
where the three women had been tossed in the bay. They were convinced
that the bodies were not put in the water from land or a bridge.
Whoever did this to Joan, Michelle and Christe Rogers did a thorough
job, leaving few clues. But the concrete blocks failed to keep
his secrets at the bottom of Tampa Bay. (Still, once they were
found it took four days to identify the missing tourists.) Back
at the Days Inn, a maid finally noticed, on Thursday, June 8,
that the Rogers' room hadn't been used in a week. The motel's
call to police determined the murdered women's identities; their
car was discovered at the boat ramp the same day, following a
tip from a couple who remembered seeing it there about 2 p.m.
on June 1.
Central Florida's most intense and, for years, most frustrating,
manhunt was on.
* * *
Back at the family farm
in Willshire, Ohio, until Hal Rogers heard from St. Petersburg
police, he thought his wife had deserted him. He had reported
her missing to the Van Wert County sheriff on Tuesday, June 6.
But he and Joan were not exactly Ozzie and Harriet; she had had
affairs and he had bailed his brother out of jail. As a result,
Rogers himself was briefly a suspect.
A brochure later discovered in Joan's car "Clearwater Beach
Your Destination Island" had notes written by two people.
One was by Joan's hand; the other belonged to the man who took
the family for a one-way ride. For the next three years, the
handwriting sample and a chance palm print found on the brochure
were the only concrete evidence that could link a suspect to
the killings.
What happened between the Rogerses disappearance on June 1 and
the discovery of three dead women in Tampa Bay three days later
is still unknown. But court records of the police investigation,
released under Florida's public record laws, reveal much about
the life of Oba Chandler, a man of more than a dozen aliases
and whom authorities believe murdered Joan Rogers and her two
daughters on June 1, 1989. (Numerous calls to Chandler's St.
Petersburg attorney, Tom McCoun, for comment went unanswered.)
Meet the Chandlers
For Oba Chandler,
a 41-year-old aluminum contractor, moving in with Debra Whiteman
was an improvement from sharing a mobile home with his mother.
At least he told Debra he was living with his mother. His daughter
Kristal knew the truth: while dating Debra, Oba was living with
and engaged to another woman, Barbara Leiby. Oba always felt
compelled to tell Kristal the truth about everything. In this
case, he told Kristal he started seeing Debra because she was
younger and prettier than Barbara. He especially liked the way
Debra learned not to pry into his background or ask about the
things he did when she wasn't around. If he didn't want to talk
about himself, she wouldn't ask a second time. If he stayed out
too late or disappeared for a while, she wasn't the kind to hassle
him.
Debra, twice married herself, knew Oba had been married once
before and that he had children from relationships with several
women. He told her about spending time in prison for dealing
drugs. She even met his probation officer. But Oba convinced
Debra that all that was behind him.
They were married May 14, 1988. At least two of Oba's children
attended the ceremony, memorable for the near-brawl that took
place when Jeff Chandler made a pass at his married half-sister,
Kristal.
Debra became pregnant almost immediately and their daughter,
Whitney, was born February 6, 1989. It was Oba's seventh child,
although Debra didn't know it at the time.
While Debra was pregnant, Oba started his own aluminum business
in Tampa, Custom Screens. Things went reasonably well and he
took his new bride to look at a blue-and-white, 21' Bayliner
boat he wanted to purchase. But Debra was more interested in
the boat owner's house, which had a pool and dock and was also
for sale. They purchased both the house and boat at 10790 Dalton
Avenue in Tampa, using $10,000 of Debra's $40,000 divorce settlement
from her first husband as the downpayment.
Life with Oba would never be as good as it was at that moment.
The Chandlers were newlyweds, about to becoming parents and they
were in business for themselves.
Debra asked her husband little about his background and none
of his immediate family offered information. He was born and
raised in Cincinnati. He attended public schools, failed fourth-grade
due to truancy and didn't get any further than the eighth-grade
at Cutter Junior High. When he left school, his IQ. was 91 but
school authorities reported "he functions at the dull normal
level." Chandler was in juvenile court 18 times before reaching
maturity. His mother blamed Oba's problems on his father's suicide.
Oba was 10 when it happened.
Before his 20th birthday, Chandler took up with Martha Lou Glass.
She became pregnant twice out of wedlock, in the mid-1960s, producing
two daughters, Kristal Sue and Valerie Lynn. While maintaining
a relationship with Martha Lou, Chandler had a son, Jeffrey Scott,
by another woman. (Jeff was raised by his paternal grandmother.)
In 1969 he married a Cincinnati Playboy Club bunny, Jennifer
Jones, and deserted Martha and his daughters. In the early 1970s
he married again, moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, and had a son
named Skipper. The parentage of two other children, Toby and
Steven, is unclear from court records. He may also be the father
of at least one more child.
Chandler did take a break from the family scene from Christmas
Day, 1965, to January 11, 1967, for a stint in the U.S. Marines
at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. Pvt. Chandler received an
honorable discharge.
Debra didn't know that Oba's father committed suicide, only that
"he was dead because he was old." Being Debra, she
accepted that. The truth is, Oba Sr. spent five years in mourning
over the death of a son in a power line accident and attempted
suicide several times before finally succeeding by hanging himself
in the basement. He was discovered by his 12-year-old daughter,
Helen. Oba's mother, Margaret, did not attend her husband's burial
because of threats she received from Oba Sr.'s family; they believed
she killed him. At the burial on June 1, 1957 Oba, 10, jumped
into the open grave and stomped up and down on his father's casket.
Oba Sr. wasn't the first in his family to commit suicide. Margaret
recalls that Oba Sr.'s brother, Carter, and sister, Addie, both
shot themselves.
Among the other things Debra didn't know was that her husband
had been arrested in Cincinnati in 1971 for disorderly conduct
when he was caught looking in apartment windows and masturbating.
She also didn't know that her new husband had been in prison
not once but three times.
The longer they were married, the more convinced Debra became
that her husband had not ended his criminal behavior. He routinely
had large sums of money, which she assumed came from drug sales
or some other illegal activity. But rather than question her
secretive spouse, she just accepted his way of life.
Familiar Details
New developments
on the Rogers murders were slow in coming until detectives got
a lucky break.
Two Canadian women on holiday in Madeira Beach, Florida, met
a pot-bellied, deeply tanned man on May 14, 1989. He said his
name was Dave Posno and he offered to take them for a boat ride
the next day, a common occurrence along the beaches. A morning
trip passed without incident, although only one of the women,
a 24-year-old, blonde social worker, chose to go, leaving Posno
moody and sullen. Returning to dock, he offered a sunset cruise,
urging her to bring her girlfriend and camera along. But again
the friend declined to go. It was a decision that probably saved
both their lives.
The man drove his boat several miles offshore into the Gulf of
Mexico, took pictures of his guest and she of him and enjoyed
the picnic lunch she packed for them. Immediately, the mood changed.
He desperately pushed himself on her, hugging and feeling her
body. When she tried to talk him out of it, he pointed to a roll
of grey duct tape and threatened to tape her mouth shut. "Is
sex worth losing your life over?" he asked.
When she protested that she was a virgin, he got very excited.
Frightened, she consented to oral and vaginal sex. Afterwards
as she huddled alone in a corner, scared, crying, he pulled the
film from her camera and tossed it overboard. He also tried to
wipe his fingerprints off the camera. He behaved like a caged
animal, pacing the boat, gesticulating and speaking wildly. He
also threw up several times over the side of the boat.
The assailant returned the victim to John's Pass on Madeira Beach,
where he had picked her up hours earlier, and sped off. The victim,
in shock, didn't immediately report the rape.
When she did call police the next day, it was too late for forensics
experts to collect any physical evidence. But the victim did
provide a clear description of her attacker. He was 37 to 40
years old, 5'9" or 5'10", 200 lbs. and stocky, with
a pot belly. He had short, reddish blond hair, a light mustache,
pock-marked face and a dark, leathery complexion. He wore a mint
green, short-sleeve shirt with mesh on the bottom half. He smoked
Marlboros. His vehicle was a dark blue, newer model, 4-door Isuzu
Trooper with tinted windows; his boat, which she thought was
close to 20 feet, had a blue canopy top and exterior, white interior
and the word "Volvo" painted in yellow on the engine
compartment. She also recalled the man cutting gray duct tape
and having an assortment of ropes in with the life preservers.
She also wondered if her assailant let her live only because
her girlfriend could identify him. Perhaps he thought the rape
would not be reported at all, or that he could plead the sex
was consensual. And she wondered whether he would have raped
and killed both of them if her girlfriend had gone along.
Madeira Beach police thought there were too many similarities
between the rape and the Rogers murders. The St. Petersburg police,
overwhelmed by hundreds of useless leads, did not immediately
act on this one. But when they did, they were intrigued to learn
there was no boat registration in Florida for a David Posno (or
any other similar name). They also came up empty in a check of
Isuzu dealers. No one had a record of a Dave Posno. And there
was no Florida record of Posno as a nurse, the profession he
claimed to have.
The less information the police developed on Dave Posno, the
more credibility he gained as a suspect. Whoever he was.
Debra Starts to Worry
Debra Chandler noticed a change come over her husband in the
fall of 1989. His temper was on a short fuse and he yelled often.
Oba wouldn't sleep in the same bed with Debra and they didn't
have sex for months. In one argument, Debra threatened to take
Whitney and leave her husband for good. Oba made it clear that
wasn't going to happen. He blocked her path and pushed Debra
into a door, bruising her arm on the jam.
And in early November, a police composite sketch of the alleged
assailant in the Madeira Beach rape began appearing almost daily
in the Tampa Tribune, St. Petersburg Times and
four local evening TV news programs. Oba vanished.
Debra was not entirely surprised; she later said she recognized
immediately that the composite "looked exactly like Oba."
After weeks worrying about her husband and whether he had killed
the Rogers women and raped the Madeira Beach woman, Debra was
visited by Oba's son Jeff and his wife. By coincidence, one of
Oba's daughters, Kristal, called from Ohio. Kristal who for weeks
had denied knowing the whereabouts of her father told Debra about
Oba's rape and murder confessions. But Debra acted as if she
didn't know what Kristal was talking about.
Then Kristal told Debra to go to a pay phone and call her back.
She called Kristal from the pay phone and gave her the number.
Kristal told her to go to a different phone. Minutes later, the
second pay phone rang and Jeff answered. "It's Dad,"
he said, handing the phone to Debra.
This was not the call Debra wanted. Oba sounded paranoid. He
had money problems, he wanted out of their marriage. And he wanted
to know if she had talked to the police about him. No, Debra
said, over and over. And I want you to come home to the baby
and me.
There was at least one more call between Kristal and Oba's current
wife, this one placed by Debra. She said there had been no murders
in Florida, the house wasn't bugged and she thought Oba was having
a nervous breakdown.
Shortly after Thanksgiving, Oba called again and asked Debra
if he could come home. He did and that very night, Debra confronted
him about the Madeira Beach rape. He denied any knowledge of
it.
Lula Harris worked as a babysitter and receptionist in her brother
Oba's business in 1989 and 1990. Debra didn't like her much;
if there were a dispute between Oba and Debra, Lula would egg
them on into a fight. One morning she walked into the Chandler
home on Dalton Avenue and found Debra looking troubled as she
read through newspaper clippings her husband had saved. The subject
of the clips: the murder of Joan Rogers and her two daughters.
"Lula," Debra said, "I think Obie did it."
"Debra . . . " Lula started to say. But then Oba walked
in. Lula turned to her brother and asked him, point blank, "Junior,
did you kill them women?"
No, he said. That was good enough for Lula. "Okay,"
she said, putting an end to the conversation and leaving the
room. And Debra convinced herself that the alleged assailant's
height (5'10"; Oba was 6') and vehicle description (he drove
a Jeep Cherokee, not an Isuzu Trooper) didn't actually match
her husband.
Life in the Chandler house gradually resumed its usual pattern
for the next six months.
Road Trips
Oba abruptly closed
his business in 1990, Debra quit her job and they announced they
were moving to California. They left behind most of their belongings
in Tampa, abandoning their mortgage as well. It was the last
contact much of Chandler's family would have with him for almost
two years.
Their travels took the Chandlers on an erratic journey across
the country, although they wound up back in Florida once again,
this time near Fort Lauderdale. So many thousands of miles took
their toll on Oba's Jeep. The clutch went out and then it was
repossessed. Oba replaced it with an older brown pickup truck.
Oba began a new career as a snitch for U.S. Customs and the Drug
Enforcement Agency (DEA). He was always on the phone, setting
up drug deals, sometimes entrapping family or friends to make
a buck. Loyalty was an alien concept to Chandler.
The Chandlers changed phone numbers almost as often as they changed
socks. And because Debra and Oba's credit was so bad, the phone
and other utilities were in two-year-old Whitney's name.
Oba made new friends when the couple moved to Port Orange, near
Daytona Beach, including a 14-year-old girl who lived in their
neighborhood. She went fishing at a pier with Oba every day and
began spending time at the Chandler house on a daily basis until
Debra told her to quit coming around. Amazingly enough, the teen's
mother was mad at Debra for chasing her away from Oba.
The specter of the Rogers triple murder and the questions of
Oba's possible involvement was not completely left behind in
Tampa. One night, Debra saw a re-enactment of the crime on NBC's
Unsolved Mysteries.
Baubles and Baby
Money woes drove
Oba once more to armed robbery on September 11, 1992. The rent
was months behind and he had already pawned Debra's earrings
for grocery money.
Chandler drove Debra and Whitney from Port Orange to Clearwater.
A few days earlier they had done surveillance on two traveling
jewelry re-mounters at a shopping mall. Debra and Whitney had
even posed as customers to get a better look at their pigeons.
Oba already knew where they were staying. He showed his wife
two motels, the first, a Days Inn where he would meet her after
the robbery, the second, a Residence Inn where she dropped him
at 9:30 p.m. to commit the crime.
Debra waited for her husband at the back of the Residence Inn.
The plan was for him to drive past her and then for Debra to
follow him to the prearranged meeting point at the Days Inn.
It didn't take long. No sooner did Debra open a book and begin
reading to Whitney than she heard tires squealing and Oba driving
past her in a large vehicle. She followed him on a back street
to the Days Inn, whereupon Oba hurriedly began transferring jewelry
cases from one trunk to the other. As he climbed into Debra's
Toyota, both she and Whitney saw him put a chrome handgun under
the front passenger seat.
"Why do you have a gun, Daddy?" Whitney asked.
Oba didn't answer. And Debra knew better to ask any questions
either.
When they returned to Port Orange, Oba put the jewelry cases
in a spare bedroom and locked the door. Later, he gave his wife
several gold rings from the heist. Using a jeweler's blowtorch
he found in one of the cases, Chandler melted much of the gold
into a blob and sold it for several thousands of dollars in Orlando.
Captured!
Oba Chandler was arrested on September 24.
A Tampa Bay area billboard campaign reproducing the man's handwriting
from a tourism brochure found in Joan Rogers' car did what no
eyewitness could: it created a link between the disappearance
of the three Ohio women and a career criminal.
Lead No. 1,507 came on March 25, 1992, from a woman who told
police that her sister in Tampa lived two houses over from a
man whose boat and truck matched the description of those being
sought in the Rogers' murder investigation. The same neighbor
told police that she recognized Oba Chandler as the man in a
police composite sketch. The coincidence now alarmed her that
he moved away soon after the victims were found. She also provided
police with an example of Chandler's handwriting, a contract
for work Chandler did.
On the last day in July, a second woman called police to say
she also recognized the handwriting on the billboards. It matched
the scrawl on a contract estimate for a screen enclosure her
mother received before hiring a man named Oba Chandler.
Police investigating the Rogers murders obtained a photograph
of Chandler and found it bore a remarkable resemblance to the
police composite drawing of the Madeira Beach rapist. Chandler's
height, weight and hair matched the rape victim's description.
And, at the time of the crime, he did own a dark blue 1985 Jeep
Cherokee, which the victim described as an Isuzu Trooper, and
a blue, 21-foot Bayliner boat with a broken steering wheel and
a Volvo motor.
A decision was made to upgrade Chandler from spot checks to round-the-clock
surveillance; to do a "pen register" of his telephone
(recording what calls are placed and to whom); and to track down
the current locations of his former boat and 1985 Jeep Cherokee.
A background check on Chandler brought a wide range of offenses
covering two states, Florida and Ohio. They included 18 juvenile
arrests in Ohio plus armed robbery (besides material goods, he
once stole a man's dog), counterfeiting and escaping from prison
as an adult. He lied on his marriage license, indicating it was
his first marriage. Debra was at least his third wife.
On September 7, the police received the results of a check of
fingerprint evidence. While Chandler's fingerprints did not match
the prints on the Clearwater brochure found in Joan Rogers' car,
they did get a positive match on his palm print.
On September 10, in a Hamilton, Ontario, Holiday Inn, he was
positively identified from a package of six photos by the Canadian
social worker he allegedly raped in 1989. (Her girlfriend also
identified Chandler.) Chandler's face was on the third picture
the victim saw and she put it on the top of the deck. The victim
signed and dated the photograph.
"Do you mind if I turn his photograph over?" she asked.
"It's really bothering me."
A decision was made to arrest Chandler on either September 17
or 18, but he surprised the task force by leaving the state suddenly
on the 17th. Maybe something spooked him, maybe he planned to
travel all along. He drove to Cincinnati, where his luck began
to run out.
Chandler fenced a portion of the jewelry stolen in Pinellas Park
for $9,500. The man he sold it to, a used car salesman, immediately
tried to re-sell it for $15,000 to a retail jeweler. But the
jeweler, who valued the 214 items at $35,000, became suspicious
and the man wound up in jail.
Evading capture in Ohio by sheer luck, Chandler's survival instincts
nonetheless failed him and he was arrested immediately upon his
return, September 24, at an Interstate 75 gas station near his
home in Volusia County. He offered no resistance.
Chandler was informed only that he was being charged with sexual
battery and that his bond would be $1 million. The extremely
high bond must have tipped him off that more than a rape charge
was involved, but neither he or the police raised the Rogers
triple homicide. Found on Chandler was a variety of jewelry from
the Pinellas Park robbery, including a diamond stashed in his
wallet. He also had a discount coupon for an upcoming gem &
jewelry show.
Tim and Maria Pearson remember the night Chandler was arrested.
The 11 o'clock news was on, although they weren't paying much
attention until they heard the name of their friend and former
next-door-neighbor.
"Both of our eyes went wide open," Maria recalls. "Oba
Chandler! It was a name you couldn't forget. We would never have
suspected someone like Oba we called him Obie. Of all the neighbors
in the area, he was the one we'd least suspect."
"Obie" was the man who could fix anything. When the
Pearsons tried to replace their front walk and ran into a problem,
Obie got it done properly. When the pool pump broke down while
Tim was at work, Obie fixed it for Maria. When the Pearsons seawall
needed to be rebuilt, Obie allowed the general contractor to
do prep work in his driveway.
The Pearsons remember the Chandlers as friends who invited them
over to see their new baby and later their new boat. "We
were glad to see that kind of neighbor move in," Maria says.
"There were times we'd go out of town and we'd have somebody
housesit. We'd say, 'If you have a problem, go see Oba.' He was
the kind of person who would help you out."
"He didn't take his boat out late at night, he didn't keep
strange hours," Tim says. "He was very outgoing, gregarious."
Not long before the Chandlers left, Tim heard power tools making
lots of noise on Obie's boat. Obie said that he and his son were
fixing up the interior to sell it. The activity continued for
several weeks. Chandler even tried to sell the boat to the Pearsons.
"Oh, c'mon, Tim!" he said. "I'll make you a great
deal on it!"
"One day they were there, the next day they were completely
gone," Tim says. "(Chandler) said his aunt or cousin
had an extra house and they were going to live with them. We
didn't know they were going to default on the house; we didn't
know they were in financial trouble."
Ten days after his arrest, Chandler was also charged with armed
robbery, stemming from the September 11, 1992 robbery of $700,000
worth of jewelry from a man in Pinellas Park, Florida. (He pleaded
no contest to the robbery charges in late July and was sentenced
to 15 years in prison.)
On November 10, 1992, Oba Chandler was indicted on three counts
of first degree murder in the deaths of Joan, Michelle and Christe
Rogers.
* * *
Unaware that her father
had been arrested, Kristal casually called her Aunt Lula.
"Did you know they've arrested your dad?" Lula asked.
"No," Kristal answered, her worst fears confirmed.
"For what?" Despite what she heard from her father
three years earlier, Kristal became terribly upset. Lula gave
her niece the phone number of the investigating detective.
Kristal finally decided to call the St. Petersburg police and
tell them what she knew. It was a horrible secret to have kept
she wasn't sure why she even did and it felt good to finally
tell someone.
Meanwhile, the Canadian rape victim and her girlfriend flew to
St. Petersburg where they positively identified Oba Chandler
in a lineup as the victim's assailant.
* * *
The reaction of Chandler's
immediate family to his arrest was remarkable. His sister, Lula,
called him a liar. His uncle, William Johnson, said he was always
up to no good. His son, Jeff, said Oba was a swindler and a con
artist but not a murderer. And his daughter, Kristal, to him
he told his deepest secrets, said Oba treats women like garbage,
has no morals and needs help.
The worst part? Kristal Sue Mays knows that when her father comes
to trial in November, he will feel no pain, no remorse. And learning
that the women closest to him Kristal, Debra and Lula contributed
to his prosecution will probably just make him meaner. If that's
possible.
Bob Andelman is the author or co-author of 12 books, including Mind Over Business with Ken Baum, The Consulate with Thomas R. Stutler, The Profiler with Pat Brown, Built From Scratch with the founders of The Home Depot, The Profit Zone with Adrian Slywotzky, Mean Business with Albert J. Dunlap, and Will Eisner: A Spirited Life. Click here to see Bob Andelman's Amazon Central author page. He is a member in good standing of the American Society of Journalists and Authors (member page).
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