LAST CALL

The grisly account of a serial killer’s stint of murders in Manhattan in the early 1990s, unknown to many true-crime fans because his victims—older gay men—were viewed as dispensable.

It’s not until nearly halfway through this gripping book that Green cites the name of the killer, Richard Rogers Jr. That approach allows the author to expertly direct the suspense, leading readers to speculate about the background and personality of someone who was capable of dismembering a victim and placing the remains in trash bags. Those bags in particular—Rogers had a penchant for stuffing his targets in bags—were discovered by a maintenance worker at a rest area along the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 1991. Born in 1950 in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Rogers was a “gangly, awkward teenager” teased for his effeminacy, and he had few friends. Eventually, he developed into a bland, fanatic neatnik who commuted from his apartment on Staten Island to his job as a nurse at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan. Rogers liked to chat up patrons of the Townhouse, a gay bar in Midtown that catered to professionals and had a “famous tendency for generous pours.” Green focuses on five of Rogers’ victims, though there is speculation he may have killed more. In addition to bestowing humanity and dignity on the victims, Green demonstrates impressive reporting chops. For example, he unearthed Rogers’ earliest killing in Maine even though the trial ended in an expunged record. The author also provides substantive documentation of the New York media’s and New York Police Department’s callous neglect of the murders. Only occasionally is the text marred by insipid writing—e.g., “Dead bodies tend to smell bad after a while.” Even though Green made dogged, repeated attempts to interview Rogers, who refused, the narrative would have benefitted from an analysis of the abnormal psychology that compelled Rogers, a gay man, to choose other gay men as his prey.

A deeply researched reclamation of a series of unfairly forgotten, gruesome crimes.