In a quadruple murder, one man is convicted but the motive remains a mystery
Police found the bodies of the dead and dying throughout the small two-bedroom home in suburban Maryland just outside of the District. One man was shot in the eye as he sat on the living room couch. Another victim, a woman, was slumped over in a nearby recliner. And two more people, a man and a woman also shot, were bleeding in a bedroom.
More than three years after the four friends, who had been settling in for what was supposed to be a quiet Friday night, were attacked, the man who authorities say fired a gun at them over and over again was convicted of multiple counts of murder.
A Prince George’s County jury on Friday found Lawrence Sylvester Rogers Jr., 27, guilty of 17 counts in all, including attempted murder, assault and weapons charges in addition to murder.
Though the conviction brings some measure of closure in the case, the motive behind the slayings remained a mystery despite hours of evidence and testimony prosecutors presented over five days of trial. The trial also left unanswered what, if any, prior connection Rogers had to any of the victims.
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The trial centered on the shooting that occurred June 24, 2016, in a home on Orleans Avenue in District Heights.
One of the residents, Jonathan Givons, had left to walk his pit bull that evening, he testified. When he returned about 15 to 20 minutes later, he said, the front door snapped shut as he tried to get into the house. As he went around to a side door, he heard his girlfriend inside screaming, “Why are you doing this?”
Givons testified that he heard several shots fired inside the home before a man ran out the front door, slid around the lawn and then fired at him.
“I tried to run toward the back of the house,” Givons testified about encountering the gunman after the first bullet grazed his arm. “When I tried to get away, that’s when he shot me again.”
With his dog Cinnamon’s leash still linked to his arm, Givons said, he fell to the ground as the gunman fled.
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The four people inside the home were fatally wounded. Carlina Renee Gray, 50; Jan Marie Parks, 55; and Allen Rowlett, 60, died immediately after the shooting.
Harold Williams, 65, who was rendered quadriplegic, lingered for months in medical facilities before he died.
All had either lived in the home or were visiting as friends the night of the shooting.
As the only surviving victim, Givons did not directly point out Rogers as the gunman, but he told jurors that a man in long dreadlocks, a white T-shirt and jeans had shot him.
Police had collected surveillance video from shops and homes in the area that showed a man matching the description Givons had provided. Authorities later identified the man as Rogers. They also found witnesses who interacted with Rogers that night, including one man who testified he had been randomly approached by Rogers at a nearby gas station asking for a ride. The man agreed to drive Rogers to a motel in exchange for cash, and he testified that Rogers’s body language changed, slumping as if to hide his head, as they passed the police lights surrounding the shooting scene.
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Rogers later asked to use the man’s identification to check into the hotel and the man refused, he testified. Rogers then checked in with his own identity, prosecutors said.
Days later, police tracked Rogers to a home in Southeast Washington. When police first entered the apartment with a search warrant, a man and woman inside said they were the only ones there, according to court testimony. But as police swept through the property, they found a closet door blocked with plastic clothes bins. Police found Rogers inside with his hands in the air, a District officer testified.
“He’s the only person in the apartment who hides ... because he knows why the police are there,” Prince George’s County Assistant State’s Attorney Sherrie Waldrup said during closing arguments.
In another closet in the apartment, Waldrup said, police found a gun that forensic experts testified was the weapon used in the Orleans Avenue killings.
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Assistant Public Defender Richard Rydelek insisted the prosecution’s case was shaky. Rydelek questioned the quality of the black-and-white surveillance video showing a man running from the murder scene and said it didn’t definitively identify his client.
Rydelek also said no evidence was presented to show a connection between his client and the people killed. There were no fingerprints on the door. Money, jewelry and drugs remained in the house after the shooting, Rydelek said, so it wasn’t a robbery. And, he said, prosecutors never said Rogers knew the victims.
“The simple truth is there has been no evidence of any kind to establish a motive for these killings,” Rydelek said. “With lack of motive, it makes it that much more difficult to understand this.”
But, Waldrup suggested, if Rogers were not guilty, why do jailhouse phone calls and letters show him urging his mother to lie on his behalf? In a letter to a girlfriend, Rogers wrote he was “faking mental illness” to “take the crazy route” at trial, Waldrup said.
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In one letter to his mother, Rogers said a psychologist would be contacting her and that she should say he had a “split personality” and describe “how I used to talk to myself and ate paint” as a child, Waldrup said.
“‘Let them know I wasn’t regular,’” Waldrup said Rogers pleaded with his mother, urging her to lie so he could come home.
After the jury read the verdict, Rogers turned to his family and a woman gave him words of assurance.
“Just stay strong, okay?” she said. “It’s not the last word.”
Family of the victims left pleased with the verdict.
“I’m happy to see that justice is prevailing,” said Gloria Eskridge, Williams’s sister. “It’s been a long, agonizing three years.”
Givons said it has been difficult moving on from that night. He goes to therapy regularly to tend to both his mental and physical wounds.
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“It’s been like trying to start my whole life again,” he said. “It’s been rough.”
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