Jeffrey Dahmer's name goes down in infamy, but who is Richard Rogers? Murderers who terrorized the LGBTQ+ community in Milwaukee and New York City, respectively, the latter is the subject of the new true crime documentary, Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York.
The recently-released project from Max focuses on the victims' families and the aftermath of their loved ones' deaths rather than the killer, which might leave viewers with questions if they're unfamiliar with the story. But truthfully, it seems everyone still has questions about Rogers, even 30+ years after his senseless crimes.
"The big unanswered question in this case is why," William Heisler, an Ocean County, New Jersey, prosecutor, told The New York Times. "For whatever reason, he was targeting gay men in New York. All we know is they were drunk when they went missing."
Here's what you need to know about this eerily familiar story.
Who is Richard Rogers, murderer from 'Last Call'?
Richard Rogers was a nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City who called Staten Island his home. One wouldn't expect someone in the healthcare field to be responsible for any wrongdoing, but Rogers was ultimately arrested in 2001 for a series of murders he conducted in the early '90s, and later sentenced in 2006. His victims included Thomas Mulcahy, Anthony Marrero, Peter S. Anderson, and Michael Sakara, all members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Like Dahmer, he'd frequent gay clubs and committed similar unthinkable acts, such as dismembering his victims' bodies and scattering their remains in garbage bags throughout the tristate area. Another glaring coincidence between both cases is that law enforcement officials were not paying as much attention to these crimes as they should have been.
Author Elon Green, who wrote Last Call, A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York (on which the docu-series is based) spoke to A&E about the negligence and said, "I felt that if the reader didn’t know what was going on at the time in New York, with the legal system, the judicial system, law enforcement…there would be no way to understand the bigger picture of why these cases were treated the way they were."
He added: "I should say that I went into the book assuming that one of the reasons the case wasn’t solved for so long was pure indifference and negligence because the victims were gay. That was my bias. And it turned out to not be true, for the most part."
Where is Richard Rogers today?
Unlike Dahmer, Rogers is still alive and currently serving time behind bars at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. The 73-year-old is eligible for parole on September 18, 2066. According to Green, Rogers was unwilling to speak with him when he was putting his book together but alleged the murderer doesn't seem fazed by all that has transpired.
"He seems to enjoy watching the news. He’s a frequent letter writer," the author told A&E. "He doesn’t seem at all unhappy. And he maintains his innocence."
Watch the 'Last Call' trailer:
Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York is streaming on Max as of Sunday, July 9.
The Jeffrey Dahmer series on Netflix, Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is also streaming. The Jeffrey Dahmer confession tapes inspired another Netflix project, a documentary titled Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes, which is also currently streaming.
