BY SCOTT CHARTON, The Associated Press
FULTON, Mo. (AP) -- As cell doors slam shut behind Jack Wayne Rogers, convicted on federal child pornography charges, people who thought they knew him are bewildered by police statements linking Rogers to a missing man, bondage, torture, cannibalism and amateur sexual surgeries.
Around central Missouri, Rogers, 58, led a country church as lay minister and ran an employment agency. He did heavy lifting for his 78-year-old neighbor, Julia Petershagen.
“He was just the nicest fellow, always spoke and said hello,” Petershagen, who goes by “Granny,” said as she baked apple cobbler. “That’s why I just can’t believe this stuff.”
But in affidavits to obtain search warrants, officers said Rogers prowled a secretive Internet world focusing on sexual torture. They offer a transcript, supposedly of Rogers’ graphic online description of picking up a young hitchhiker, then drugging, sexually assaulting, mutilating and killing the man at a camp site before disposing of his remains.
Police admit the investigation presents a challenge: separating facts proving a terrible crime from online fantasies that would sicken most people but aren’t acted upon.
No state charges have been filed against Rogers, who is in federal custody awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty Nov. 12 to child pornography and obscenity charges.
“Because of the anonymity of the Internet, people have a tendency to exaggerate or to just out and out lie. Therefore, when you find something like what we have with Rogers, while it’s pretty grisly, you have to have something more than just what you find in an Internet chat room,” Capt. Chris Ricks, a patrol spokesman, said Friday.
Law enforcement agencies said they may have found evidence on Nov. 17 during a four-hour search around flower beds, walkways and a travel camper parked in Rogers’ back yard, which is obscured by a 6-foot-high wooden fence.
The patrol said two search dogs indicated finding “human biological matter.” Court papers say searchers removed a backpack, miscellaneous tent items and couch cushions from the camper.
Sgt. David Merrill, case investigator for the patrol, said Friday that tests are under way to see whether the findings of the search of Rogers’ property match DNA of Branson Kayne Perry.
The 20-year-old man was last seen April 11, 2001, as he left his home in Skidmore in northwest Missouri, a drive of more than 200 miles from Fulton.
After Perry’s disappearance, an existing multistate federal child pornography investigation led to the seizure of an Alabama man’s computer, on which authorities said they found evidence of graphic conversations between the man and Rogers. Later seizures of Rogers’ computer equipment also contained the conversations.
One such conversation -- after Perry’s disappearance -- included Rogers making references to picking up, torturing and killing the missing man, the affidavit said.
That exchange included personal information only Perry or someone who had talked to him would know, the affidavit said. Also, police said they found a leather necklace with a turtle claw in Rogers’ van; the missing man’s father said it belonged to Perry.
When state police interviewed Rogers last April 9 while searching his home and business, they said he claimed to have never been to Skidmore, heard of Perry’s disappearance or discussed the man on the Internet.
Then Merrill wrote that Rogers asserted he had no information about “the missing runaway.”
Another officer noted that they never told Rogers the man was a runaway.
Merrill said Rogers paused, shifted in his chair, and said he assumed Perry was a runaway.
Then Merrill showed Rogers the chat transcript describing Perry’s death.
The 19-year law enforcement veteran said he watched Rogers “swallow hard, shift in his chair and his face flush.”
Merrill said Rogers finally said: “It appears that I may have been playing a game with someone.” At that point, he asked for an attorney and the questioning stopped.
Rogers’ attorney in the federal pornography case, Valerie Leftwich, was out of her office Friday and did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press.
But Leftwich has suggested that the transcript could be a work of fiction, telling The Kansas City Star: “A chat room is associated with all kinds of fantasy.”
The police affidavits allege Rogers moved beyond fantasy, meeting a man and his wife in a Columbia hotel room to perform a “sexual nullification” procedure, in which the man’s genitals were surgically removed. Among items seized from Rogers’ home were a scalpel set and other items that could be used for surgery, police said.
All of this has dismayed people who thought they knew Rogers, who, after his release from prison following a 1992 child pornography conviction, resumed his life in Fulton and eventually became lay minister at a Presbyterian church in Bellflower, traveling about 40 miles one way to hold services.
The Rev. Jack Barden, pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Fulton, said he had been told the denomination authorized Rogers’ lay service at Bellflower after he underwent “counseling and psychological evaluation” in the 1990s because of his previous conviction. He said a representative of the denomination met weekly with Rogers during the three years he served the Bellflower church.
“I don’t think anybody ever questioned his performance as a lay pastor,” Barden said.
One member of the Bellflower church, Christie Adams, said the congregation was shaken by Rogers’ arrest last spring on the child pornography charges. Some quit the church, but Adams said others apparently knew of Rogers’ 1992 conviction and were convinced he had been “set up.”
“It’s so hard to believe that someone can lead such a separate life from the man we thought he was,” Adams said.
In Skidmore, Rebecca Perry weeps for her missing son. She recently drove to Jefferson City to watch Rogers appear in federal court and said Friday that being in his presence made her tremble.
“From what the police say, Rogers is the prime suspect. But all I can do is pray that my son is still alive,” Perry said. “Not a day goes by that tears don’t fall.”