The views and opinions expressed in Cold and Missing are exclusively those of the hosts. All parties mentioned are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Cold and Missing also contains adult themes and languages. Listener discretion is advised. I'm your host, Allie McLaughlin-Sulkowski. And I'm your co-host, Eli Sulkowski. And this is Cold and Missing, where we cover cold cases and missing person cases. Hello everyone and welcome back to Cold and Missing.
I'm Allie. And I'm Eli. Welcome back everyone. Just wanted to say at the top, thank you so much to everyone who rated and reviewed over this last week. I know I mentioned last week that I was asking for them because it was my birthday. So thank you for everyone who did that. I really appreciate it and it was such a good gift. With that being said, I thought we should go ahead and get into this week's episode.
I think before we do, we should mention that this episode will be just a little different this week. Yeah, we're going to be doing another two-parter episode. We've done a few in the past and this is just one of those cases that needs two episodes to kind of get into everything that surrounds it. Ultimately, I think that that's a good thing because usually that means there's more information out there and Cold and Missing, that's one of our goals is to spread the word.
So I think more information is always good information in this case. I always think about the saying that all facts are friendly. So facts don't have any malicious intent behind them. They are just the facts. So that's always what I try to bring. And with that, do you want to get into it? Yes, let's get into this week's episode. So just as a bit of a content warning at the top, there are some graphic details in this case today.
Today we will be covering the cold case of Rose Burkert and Roger Atkison. And this takes place in September of 1980 in the Amana colonies in Iowa. But first, a little bit about Rose and Roger. Rose is 22 years old in 1980. Her friends and family would call her Rosie. She lived in a rural part of Savannah, Missouri, but worked in nearby St. Joseph. Some reports say that she worked at St. Joseph Hospital as a nurse trainee, while others report that she was working in a nursing home.
What this tells me is that she cared for others for a living. She had a young daughter whom she loved dearly. She was a good friend and a good listener. She wasn't into the party scene and wasn't known to drink excessively or do any drugs. Roger is 32 years old in 1980. Roger is married to Marcella, and while they don't have any children themselves, they're heavily involved in their Baptist church and often spend weekends babysitting children for church members.
It does appear that Roger and Marcella were going through a tough time in their marriage. There are reports that Roger had asked for a divorce, but after him and Marcella had talked about it, and due to their faith, they had not separated. Roger worked as a telephone installer and repairer. It's rumored that he used to purposefully mess up installing phones in houses where he found the woman attractive, so he would have to go to the home a second time to fix it. This is how Roger and Rose met.
He was installing a telephone into her home. There are rumors that the affair between Rose and Roger was not a well-kept secret, that lots of people around town knew about it, but Marcella has stated that she did not know about the affair. And now a timeline of events. The week leading up to the murder, that would be the week of September 8th through the 12th of 1980, Roger was working on assignment with a crew for his job away from St. Joseph, Missouri.
He was up in northern Missouri, near the Iowa border. He called Marcella and told her that he wouldn't be coming home this weekend since there was still more work that needed to be done the next week, so he was just going to stay there. On Wednesday, September 10th, Rose drops off her daughter with friends for a few days. She's going to go spend time with Roger while he's out of town, and over the weekend they were going to head to the Amana Colonies. The Amana Colonies is a tourist spot.
It's a religious community that remained self-sufficient through the Industrial Revolution. They were German settlers, so much of the architecture through the Amana Colonies are German-style housings and buildings. Today and in 1980, Amana Colonies are a tourist attraction and a place to buy from local artisans. On Friday, September 12th, Rose and Roger take off from the job site and drive to the Amana Colonies, which was about two hours away in Iowa.
They drove Rose's car there and pulled off of I-80 to the Amana Holiday Inn. The hotel had 156 rooms between the two floors, but when Rose and Roger asked for a room, the desk attendant told them that they were completely booked. There was a mortician's conference in town, and many of them had booked rooms there. The attendant did double-check all the rooms and actually found one vacancy—a late cancellation.
Roger and Rose register under Rose's last name and check in officially around 7.40 p.m. to room 260. When they checked into the hotel room, Rose attempted to call the friends that were watching her daughter, but the friend was at work. Another call was made to the friend that evening, but it's unclear if Rose dialed the number or if the friend called back. There is also a third call that was made from room 260, but police were never able to determine who the caller was.
It's also reported that at some point that evening, room service makes a delivery to room 260, and at around 9 p.m., either Rose or Roger moved Rose's car from a reserved parking area to the parking lot. The next day, Saturday, September 13th, a little bit after noon, when checkout had been missed, a housekeeper arrives at room 260. There's a Do Not Disturb sign on the door handle.
The housekeeper knocks several times, and when there is no answer, she heads back to the front desk to grab a key and heads back to the room. Room 260 was in an out-of-the-way area in the hotel. It sat in a back corner. The only entrance to the room would have been from inside the hotel. It didn't have any outside doors or patios. The hotel room itself is a typical hotel room.
If you peered in from the hallway, you would see a bathroom entrance to your left and then a bed sitting in the middle of the room with a few chairs, a small corner table, and a TV on a stand. When the housekeeper opens the door, she finds that the TV was left on, but quickly noticed the pair of feet still in the bed. The feet were sticking out from under the comforter. Thinking that they might still be asleep, she took a few steps into the room, and then she quickly saw the horror inside.
She saw blood spattered all over the room. She took off running for the manager, and when he went to go look for himself, he quickly realized that this was serious and called the Iowa County Sheriff. When police arrive, many of the veteran officers are shocked by the scene. Rose and Roger were both found in the bed, Rose on the left side of the bed and Roger on the right side. Roger was only wearing boxers shorts, but Rose was fully clothed, except she wasn't wearing socks or shoes.
They were both face down in the bed. Each had suffered repeated blows to the back of the head by either an axe, hatchet, or a machete. Their blood had been spattered on the walls, floors, and carpet, and the spatter also contained parts of their brain. While the murder was contained in a hotel room, police have a large task of processing the scene, and frankly, the scene is bizarre. There were no signs of forced entry into the hotel room.
The lamp on Rose's side of the bed was on, but the lamp on Roger's side of the bed was off. Rose's purse and a hot lather machine were found near the foot of the bed on the floor. On the floor near Roger's side of the bed were receipts and bits of pieces from a bar of soap. It was almost as if someone had been carving the bar of soap. Also near Roger's side of the bed were two chairs that had been pulled up, as if the killer or killers had had a conversation with them.
On the corner table, it appeared that the killer had put his feet up at one point. In the bathroom, a towel had been left on the floor and counter sink. The blood in the sink and on the towel gave the impression that the killer had washed up after the act. Inside the bathtub, the killer had squirted a tube of toothpaste and left the tube on top of the tissue holder on the sink counter. In the bathroom mirror, the word, quote, this, end quote, had been written with soap.
On the bathroom door, a message had been written in the white hotel soap, but then wiped away to the point that it was indecipherable. When the medical examiner arrives to remove the bodies at about 2 p.m., he is able to determine that they have been dead for several hours. Ultimately, the time of death will be around midnight, give or take a few hours. As police continue to go through the scene, they don't notice that anything is missing.
It does seem like cash had been taken from Roger and Rose, but police rule out robbery as a motive. One thing that everyone agrees on is that this was overkill. The next day, on Sunday, September 14th, Roger and Rose's autopsy is conducted. The cause of death is acute blood loss and severe brain injuries. Roger had seven wounds ultimately to his face, head, neck, and throat area.
It gets reported again and again that some of Roger's fingers had been nearly severed, as if he was trying to protect his head from being hit from behind. Roger suffered lacerations to the scalp, skull, and brain. Rose ultimately had 12 wounds to her face, head, neck, and throat area. Rose suffered lacerations to the scalp, skull, and brain, and also had a brain contusion. Neither Roger or Rose had been sexually assaulted.
The medical examiner isn't able to say exactly what the murder weapon was, if it was an axe, hatchet, or machete, but he is able to determine that the blade would have been around 3.5 inches. Police quickly work on trying to track down people who were staying in the hotel that night, starting at the rooms closest to 260 and moving outward. But this is hard work, as most of the people staying at the hotel had already checked out and were from out of town.
The police also issue a plea to the public that if anyone was driving near the Amana Holiday Inn Friday night or early Saturday morning to please call if they saw anything out of the ordinary. As Rose and Roger's families prepare to lay them to rest, the funeral director handling their embalming talks to the media. He says that he did not observe any wounds on the bodies besides the head wounds.
He says that they were, quote, struck on the same, almost identical place on the back of the skull, end quote. But he emphasizes that there were no wounds to either of their hands, which he thought was, quote, kind of strange, end quote. But this is where we're going to leave off at part one. Next week, we're going to get into some of the stuff that's revealed in the investigation, the suspects, and other things related to the case.
So if you know anything about the murder of Rose Burkert and Roger Atkison in September of 1980, please contact the Iowa County Sheriff's Office at 319-642-7307. Or contact the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation at 515-725-6010. So that is part one. Anytime you give, you know, a content warning, I'm always mindful. But this time, you know, I was taking notes and folding our laundry and I had to just stop, I just stopped what I was doing and I went and sat down.
I feel bad just like commenting on it, but it's, it was so, it's so brutal. Very sad. No one deserves to die that way. Nobody. But with that said, I'm glad that you have brought it to our attention. Yeah, these murders were ones that, you know, made the hair stand up on my arm, like the details of it. And I think, you know, the police use the word overkill. And anytime that word is thrown around in a case, it's, for one, it's always true, but it's like, here's really the emphasis.
Like this was overkill. Like how horrible. Yeah, I couldn't stop thinking about the people who love them or knew them and that they just have to live with knowing this very sad fact about, you know, someone that they love or care for.
And I'm, again, I'm just, I'm glad as difficult as it is to, you know, learn the details of cases like these sometimes, I'm always glad to have more information because it encourages people to have more conversations, more information, more conversation, you know, the first thing I wanted to comment on and just kind of ask a question about was the Amana colonies. Is that how you say it? Amana colonies. Amana colonies.
Yeah, I just think it's a really interesting pocket of the United States, I guess. It's easy to, you know, just think of us in my mind, I just kind of localized the US as like, you know, 50 states, but you know, in every state, in every city town there, there's a possibility of like, of a full thriving independent community. I don't know, I just found it to be really interesting. And I wanted to know is, did they, I'm sorry if this is a stupid question. Is this where it happened?
So the hotel, the Amana Holiday Inn is just outside of the seven official colonies that make up the Amana colonies. I believe there's seven of them. So this hotel sits just outside, but it happens right there. I think the other closest town is Williamsburg, Iowa. Thank you for clarifying that. The refresher just makes it easier for me to continue to like connect the facts of the story. And again, I just really feel for the maid.
That's a horrifying, very traumatizing discovery that I imagine will, has stayed with her for the rest of her life. The maid actually was so traumatized by what she saw that she kind of turned into a recluse after this. It really affected her. It really, really affected her. Yeah, the imagery of that, I would imagine just eviscerates the mind. And I just, I really, I really feel for her.
A question that I did have though, upon the discovery was, and this is more a comment on the time that the medical examiner released, like what time they died. I was wondering if the first thing that popped into my head was, did they just get back from somewhere when maybe they were surprised by someone already in their room? I don't know. I just wanted your opinion on that small amount of time where the crime was happening. So the medical examiner puts it right around midnight.
From everything that I was able to read, Roger and Rose didn't really leave the hotel once they checked in. So there are a few accounts that maybe Rose was seen at the bar area. There was some mention of that. And then there's the report that Rose's car is moved by Roger or Rose, that it's a little unclear who might have moved it at 9 p.m. But from everything I can tell, they had stayed in the room.
I think my mind leaves room for the possibility that, especially with the fact that the car was moved, that maybe they were taking little trips out to grab food or snacks or, you know, go to the gas station. I don't know. Which would then put them in a position where they had entered their room, you know, with shoes on or would be like partially unclothed because they were just getting ready for bed. I think there is always space for them to have left.
But police do seem pretty confident that they didn't leave the hotel premises that night. They had a room service delivery. So they were getting food that way. And then I believe that Rose's car had actually been parked in handicap parking. So that's why it had to get moved. OK. I mean, all of that makes sense. And again, I always try to fill in the blank.
While you already covered the very malicious details of what happened in this case, I really feel like the only thing there's left for at least me to say is it was a very aggressive and angry way to end two lives. I did find it a little interesting that Rose had more injuries inflicted upon her. But I also took into account that because Roger did or because the medical examiners had this, maybe not.
But because he did have wounds, maybe defensive wounds, I'm assuming that if he could have had less because he blocked some. But I was wondering if you thought that maybe their hands were tied. Yeah. The potential of having defensive wounds and his fingers almost being severed, it's reported again and again and again. But then we have the funeral director saying that his hands were intact. Both of their hands were intact, which he thought was strange. So that's a question that I have.
Just what was the status? Because to me, if there is defensive wounds, that says that their hands weren't tied, but also that they were awake, or at least Roger was awake. I did think about the possibility of their hands being tied together or bound in some way. And maybe that was the case here. But typically police are able to tell if there was any binding of the hands because there's usually bruising that happens. You're struggling against it. You're pulling against it.
So those marks show up in the autopsy and there was no mention of that. But despite all the details I have here, police did try really hard to keep a lot of the details close to the vest. So I think there are still several things that maybe we don't know about the scene. Some of the questions that I have comes around the telephone calls. I would be really interested to know when those happened in the evening. It does seem like one kind of happened in the first few minutes after they checked in.
I imagine she was probably calling one to check in on her daughter, but you know, this is before cell phones. So she was probably calling so that way they had the hotel room phone number. So that way if they needed to call her for anything with her daughter, they would know. So we know that call happens. There's another call with the babysitters. And then the third call wins the third call in all of this.
So that I'm really curious about and the fact that police have never been able to figure out who the third phone call was either from or to because police can't tell if numbers are dialed out or dialed or called in. Yeah, I think the order of those phone calls and what was said in them definitely play a role in how everything unfolded. I have I have my I didn't think of that question, but I it's a I think it's a very important piece to the puzzle here.
The other thing that I would like to know are the receipts that were found on the floor with the bits of soap. It seems like they were all kind of scattered on the floor mixed in with each other. So whose receipts were they? Were they from Roger and Rose from this? You know, Roger had been out of town for a week, so maybe he had a lot of receipts in his pocket. Or these potentially from the murderer.
I would be really curious to know the dates of the receipts, where the receipts were from and how they play into the story. Where did they come from? And if they were from Rose and Roger, then that gives more information about where they were people who potentially saw them or interacted with them. So that's information that I would really like. Yeah, when you brought up the details about the soap and the receipts and just where they were the placement of them.
I instantly started to make up, you know, a bunch of reasons as to why they were there and what it meant that they were there. And then I very quickly thought, because we have a magnifying glass over, you know, this crime scene, anything can be anything. So I also allowed room for the possibility that it looks odd, but it could also be nothing. And I know there was some detail about the carving of the soap and then the use of the soap on the mirror and then on the wall or door.
But again, I think it could be something that, you know, cracks the case open. But I also think it could be something that doesn't really matter, you know. I think that's true in a lot of cases where this one kind of out of the place thing can seemingly be very important or maybe nothing at all.
But for me, the soap usage raises a lot of questions, like the pieces of it next to the bed and then the word this being written on the mirror and then the message on the bathroom door that was eventually wiped out to the point where nothing was readable in the message. So to me, the killer did the stuff with the soap. Like, all of that seems to have happened maybe after they were dead. It does appear like the killer spent some time in the room.
If he's writing messages on the wall, he's cleaning up in the sink. There's toothpaste in the bathtub. Like there's just these odd things happening around the room where it seems like he's at least spent a little bit of time after the crime just in there. And I would be really curious to know about that message on the door. Was it just a tiny thing? Did it take up the whole door? Was there any word that was readable or anything? Even like handwriting style, could you see anything from it?
I would be very curious to know more about that. Another thing that just came to my mind in this case, but it also happens a lot in other cases. Police will usually ask the public that, you know, if you saw anything unusual on such and such day, please call us. Or if you were in this area and saw something strange, please call us. I almost feel as if police should change their wording because it should just be, if you were in that area, give us a call and just tell us everything you saw.
Because somebody who's driving by the Amana Holiday Inn and, you know, really early in the morning and just see somebody walking to a car, that probably that's not unusual. People walk to their car all the time. It's a hotel. But depending on what time it was and, you know, does that person match a description of anybody else who was at the hotel? You know, there's so many things that maybe could be learned that way. I just, I just think that the whole phrasing should be changed. I agree.
I think that even just like slight adjustment would be a new way to refresh and filter out in a lot of different ways, but would shake some information loose. I know we're going to do a second part to this case here. So I am looking forward to hopefully learning that there's just more information about this case and connecting the dots. So for now, thank you for bringing their names to the forefronts of our minds.
Yes, we will be bringing part two next week, which we'll get into some more information that comes out throughout the years, suspects in the case, and then just some other things, other cases that could possibly be related. So we'll be getting into all of that next week.
But again, if you know anything about the double murder of Rose and Roger in the Amana colonies, in September of 1980, please call the Iowa County Sheriff at 319-642-7307 or contact the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation at 515-725-6010. We'll have pictures of Rose and Roger on our Instagram, and we will also have a diagram of the hotel room where all of the objects that I kind of mentioned were in the room to just kind of give a visual layout.
And we'll also have a few crime scene photos, nothing graphic, but just images of the hotel room and the bathroom. Those will be on our Instagram at Cold and Missing. Search us and we'll pop right up. Thank you again so much to everyone who rated and reviewed us this past week.
If you have some time today, maybe you can take the time to review us in Apple Podcast, rate us on your podcast player platform, or even go to our website www.coldandmissing.com, and you can leave us a review there or get into contact with us. We also have transcripts on our website. If you or someone you love is hard of hearing and needs a transcript, they'll be there. That is all I have for you this week. We'll be back next week covering this case.
Thank you so much for listening to Cold and Missing. I'm your host Allie. And I'm your co-host Eli. Have a good week and stay safe, y'all. Stay safe, y'all.