Documentation from 2010 shows in the Fred Laster murder case, long before they had his torso identified, police were trying to draw lines between the 1994 Lake City murder case and two bodies that were found dismembered in garbage bags in New Jersey.
Laster’s body was found in June of 1994 as a handless, headless, legless, and buttocksless torso in a dumpster behind a B.P. Gas Station in Lake City. He remained unidentified for nearly two decades. In that time police pulled at threads to try and solve the case of the unidentified torso.
The State Attorney's Office released hundreds of documents relating to the Fred Laster murder case on Friday. In those documents the attempt at the connection between the Lake City torso case and those of a similar nature in New Jersey became apparent.
Serial killer Richard Rogers, also known as ‘The Last Call Killer,’ had connections for Florida and a similar M.O. His victims were also dismembered and beheaded. Police believe that Rogers' first victim was in the spring of 1982 when he was attending a 10-year reunion at Florida Southern.
Warning: The Medical Examiner's report below contains graphic details of Fred Laster's injuries.
Medical Examiner report by Destiny Johnson on Scribd
The Columbia County Sheriff’s Office sought out a timeline of Rogers' activities at the time of the discovery of the then-unidentified torso. The timeline had Rogers in the New Jersey area at the time the torso was found. However, there were questions surrounding the bank transaction reflecting a gas purchase that placed him there. Some banks post the date of sale and others post the sale when it has gone through. If it was the latter, Rogers would need an alibi for June 2, 1994 to June 8, 1994 which would include the time that the torso was found in Lake City.
The State Attorney in New Jersey and the Jacksonville Medical Examiner reviewed the autopsy photos of the cases in New Jersey and the Lake City torso and agreed that the dismembering techniques were similar enough to warrant investigation.
Due to an issue of possible contamination, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said they would not attempt to get DNA of the suspect in the Lake City torso case off of the orange kitchen gloves found in the dumpster with the torso. The Columbia County Sheriff’s Office sought a private company to lift the DNA and compare it manually to Rogers’.
A third dismembered body from New Jersey was also being compared to the Lake City torso case and the others in New Jersey.
During this time the torso’s DNA was compared to at least four other missing boys from around Florida who matched the description given by the Medical Examiner and none of them matched.
Additionally, in 2008, a mother of a missing boy submitted a blood sample to be compared to the Lake City torso but it did not match either.
Ultimately, Rogers was sentenced to life in 2006 for the murder and dismemberment of two men and was deemed to not be involved in the Fred Laster case. But police went through exhaustive measures to process and reprocess evidence to try and bring a killer to justice.