‘She was in the freezer for 8 days.’ Man with history of violence kills wife, warrant says
Jackie Lee answered her phone Monday and heard news that left her shocked, even if it wasn’t unforeseeable.
Her ex-son-in-law, Edward Rogers Jr., 66, had apparently killed his 24-year-old wife, Alyssa Marie Mejia Rogers, and stuffed her body into a freezer in the garage of his Arlington home. The person who called Lee was Edward Rogers’ son in California. He had spoken to his father earlier, when he confessed that he had killed Alyssa Rogers more than a week earlier.
“She was in the freezer for eight days,” said Lee, 71, of Fort Worth.
Edward Rogers, who had a history of abuse in relationships, had been calling family members to say he loved them and was sorry, Lee said. And then, early Monday, he shot and killed himself.
Arlington police responded to Rogers’ home Monday in the 5200 block of Livermore Drive after a Fort Worth man said his friend had confessed to killing his wife and then shown him the body, according to a search warrant affidavit.
Arlington police found the woman’s body and found Edward Rogers dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. They are investigating the case as a murder-suicide. An autopsy is pending to officially identify the woman and determine her cause of death.
For Lee and her daughter, Jennifer Rogers, who was married to Edward Rogers for about a decade, the incident has caused them to think of his years of known domestic abuse, against Jennifer Rogers and against Alyssa Rogers. He was a “very angry and manipulative man,” Lee said.
She has thought about how, somewhere inside, she feared this could happen.
“I want to say it wasn’t a surprise,” she said. “I was afraid that one day this was going to come to somebody was going to die.”
Lee said she and her family had seen him beat Alyssa, his wife of the past two years, and even throw her across the room. Police responded to domestic abuse calls at the house on at least six occasions, she said, and in 2018 Child Protective Services removed his 13-year-old son — from his marriage to Lee’s daughter — and the 1-year-old boy he had with Alyssa Rogers.
Jennifer Rogers said she was abused as well during their marriage that ended about five years ago. She also witnessed Edward Rogers stab and kill Dwight Dorough in May 2004 over a work dispute at a pool party in Benbrook, a crime to which he later confessed, pleading guilty to manslaughter in May 2006.
He married Alyssa Rogers, a native of the Philippines, more than two years ago after they met online, Lee said. By the end of their relationship, she said, Alyssa Rogers wasn’t living at the home and had been advised by authorities to stay away.
Lee has had more questions than answers, such as why Alyssa Rogers would return to the house, and how Edward Rogers had acquired a gun.
She hasn’t yet told her 13-year-old grandson, whom she’s been raising as her son since last year. She’s not yet sure how.
“He’ll carry this forever,” Lee said. “It makes me angry, first of all — Why did you come back? Why did you kill her? Was it really necessary?”
Tip leads to recovery of 2 bodies
The Fort Worth man who contacted Arlington police said his friend had invited him into his home to show his wife’s body in the garage freezer.
The witness had worked with Edward Rogers at one time and the two had remained friends, according to the search warrant. Lee said Edward Rogers was a machinist who worked at Bell Helicopter until his manslaughter conviction.
The friend said Edward Rogers told him he was going through a turbulent divorce and was suffering from depression.
After Edward Rogers opened the freezer to show his friend the dead body of his wife, the husband “grabbed the buttocks of the deceased person, smirked, and stated that it was cold,” according to the affidavit.
On Thursday or Friday, the friend met Edward Rogers at an El Fenix restaurant in Arlington, which is when he stated his wife had falsely accused him of hitting and injuring her, the affidavit said. His wife took their child to the Philippines and left the child there, he said. Edward Rogers also said his wife had accused him of assaulting her, called the police and had him arrested.
After his arrest, Alyssa Rogers filed a protective order against Edward Rogers.
Edward Rogers told his friend that his wife later showed up at their Livermore Drive home and enticed him into having sex with her while she recorded the act. He said his wife told him that now she had proof that he had violated the protective order, according to the search warrant.
Edward Rogers later told the witness that he expected to go to prison because of his extensive criminal history and his guilty plea to the domestic violence charge. On Sunday, the friend said he received a series of text messages from Edward Rogers, saying that it was very important that they meet.
Edward Rogers picked the friend up in his car and brought him to his house, and then told him that he had killed his wife, which the friend didn’t believe. That’s when Edward Rogers opened the freezer and showed him the woman’s body.
Edward Rogers told his friend that he needed to write some letters first, but afterward he was going to commit suicide. The friend told Rogers that he wanted to go home.
On the way, Edward Rogers told the friend that his wife had said, “I got you.” Then he got in a fight with his wife and he pushed her, he said. His wife fell and hit her head on the corner of some unknown object, Edward Rogers said, according to the affidavit.
Investigators were able to corroborate the witness’s statements by seeing text messages and cell phone records that Edward Rogers and the friend sent to each other, the search warrant said.
Amanda Wyatt, 38, has lived on Livermore Drive for about the past four months and was home Monday afternoon when police cars swarmed the residence. She walked down the street to check out what was going on and said she smelled something foul coming from the garage.
On Tuesday, the garage appeared to have been beaten in, and it was covered in blue tape.
Wyatt, who has four young children, said she was shocked something like this could happen next door to her.
“Honestly, it kind of shook me up a little bit,” she said.
But other neighbors said police had responded to the home several times over the past couple of years, and some neighbors had even tried to get the woman into a domestic violence shelter.
Years of abuse, threats
One time, Lee called 911 after Edward Rogers pushed her and her daughter, she said. They had been trying to get her son out of the house because Edward Rogers had been arguing with him.
On another occasion, Jennifer Rogers called Lee in tears, saying Edward Rogers had become angry and knocked all of the items off their dresser onto the floor. Edward Rogers had thought she was cheating on him, when in reality she was with her mother, Lee said.
He was often angry and vindictive, Lee said. And after Child Protective Services removed the older son from the home last year, she said she heard from him.
“His father called me on the phone and said, ‘I’m going to kill you and I’m going to kill (my son) and I’m going to cut you up into little bitty pieces and put it where nobody will ever find you again,’” she said. “That’s what I told the police officer.”
The 13-year-old lives with Lee in Fort Worth, she said. He never again spoke to his father after he was removed from the home in Arlington.
Lee kept up with Edward Rogers, who would call her and say, “You need to come get her (Alyssa) out of my house.” She said her grandson-turned-son had seen him beating Alyssa Rogers, choking her, and throwing her across the room.
Neighbors who were familiar with the abuse had tried to get Alyssa Rogers into a domestic violence shelter, Lee said.
It was the same thing she had tried to do years earlier when her daughter was married to him, Lee said. But her daughter, too, came back.
She’s been thinking about if there would have been anything more she could have done for the victim.
“I think that everybody that was involved in this relationship was afraid that one day...” Lee said, “somebody was going to lose their life.”
This story was originally published July 30, 2019 at 2:05 PM with the headline "‘She was in the freezer for 8 days.’ Man with history of violence kills wife, warrant says."
