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, Ali McLaughlin-Solkowski. 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 Ali. And I'm Eli.
Welcome back everyone. So, if this is your first time joining us or maybe you haven't listened in a few weeks, this is a part two episode. So, it is highly recommended that you go back and listen to last week's episode because otherwise some things in this episode might not make sense. Yeah, I 100% agree. There's a lot of details that Ali has, you know, strung together for us to really give us a narrative here.
So, this episode, I think, just won't make as much sense unless you have the details of the first part. All right. Well, with that being said, let's get into part two of the cold case of Rose Burkert and Roger Atkison. Just as a small content warning at the top, there are some cases of animal cruelty that we'll talk about. So, as we already mentioned, this is part two of the Rose Burkert and Roger Atkison murder case. And this takes place in September of 1980 at the Amana colonies in Iowa.
So, last week we left off on the timeline pretty early. Rose and Roger's bodies had been discovered in a somewhat strange crime scene in their hotel room. A lot of the timeline over the years was getting new information about the crime scene and the days leading up to the murder, which we went over in the last episode. I want to jump back into the timeline just to talk about a few updates that have happened over the years since the murders in 1980.
So, on Monday, September 15th, 1980, this would have been just two days after the bodies are discovered. Police are trying to track down all of the hotel guests that were at the Amana holiday in that night. They start with those closest to room 260 and move outward. They're also looking for all employees of the hotel and nearby businesses that could have seen anything related to the brutal murder of Rose and Roger. Police do manage pretty quickly to find all those in the neighboring rooms.
They all say they didn't hear anything unusual, and they didn't see anyone out of the ordinary. Everything was normal to them. The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigations, the DCI, head to St. Joseph, Missouri to talk to members of the community to try and gather more leads. Police over the next week will continually ask the public that anyone who might have seen Rose and Roger drive from Missouri to Iowa that weekend, or maybe saw them out and about, to please call investigators.
At the one-year anniversary of the murder in September of 1981, Iowa investigators asked the FBI to create a profile. And police say, quote, the FBI was contacted and went over the entire case file. As a result of their study, they have submitted to our agency a psychological profile of the person or persons sought in the Amana case. However, at this time, we cannot reveal the contents of the FBI report to the public, end quote.
By 1992, 12 years after the murder, police working Rose and Roger's case are convinced that it was someone that knew them. A detective working the case says, quote, it was someone who knew one or both of them. My opinion, after 29 years in the business, is that it was just some gruesome, kind of vindictive type homicide, end quote. In 2020, police revealed that over the last few years, with advances in technology, that they have been able to send in evidence from the hotel room for DNA testing.
One of the items specifically was a towel that appeared to have been used by the killer to clean up after the murder. The towel contained both Roger and Rose's blood, and it was tested for touched DNA. And there was an unknown DNA profile on the towel that is believed to be the killer's. However, police have not been able to find a match for the DNA profile. So I wanted to take a minute here to talk about some other crimes that have been linked to Rose and Roger's murder.
Within days of finding Roger and Rose, police are able to connect with police in Galesburg, Illinois to discuss a similar case that they have. Galesburg police have been investigating the June 1980 murder of William R. Kyle. So this took place about two months before Roger and Rose. William R. Kyle was 25 years old and was found murdered at the Sheraton Inn in Galesburg, Illinois.
Within weeks of Rose and Roger's murder, Iowa County police say, quote, detectives from Galesburg were here this week checking with our people. The cases are similar and they're trying to determine whether there is a connection. So far, no connection has been made. We're looking at all possibilities. You have to figure whoever did it is either mad at hell at the person they're attacking or they get their kicks out of doing this kind of thing, end quote.
But by the one year anniversary of the manna slayings, police say, quote, although we have checked several reports from across the country, we still believe that the only apparent comparison with the double murder lies with the slaying in Galesburg, Illinois. That case involved the slaying of a man in a motel room on June 25, 1980. There are definite similarities in the two slayings, end quote. William Kyle was a traveling salesman.
He was found murdered in room 217 in the Sheraton Motor Inn in Galesburg, Illinois, right off of Interstate 74. William was found slumped over on the side of a bed face down with a blanket covering his torso. He had been killed with what police believe to be a hatchet. Under a chair in the room, William's wallet had been emptied onto the floor and near his body a tube of toothpaste had been emptied into the carpet.
It's unclear exactly when, but a third case comes to light and appears to be connected to both Rose and Roger's murder and then William Kyle's murder. The third murder is of a 23-year-old male in Meridian, Mississippi on October 26, 1970, so 10 years before the two other murders. This man, Jack McDonald, was found murdered in room 412 at the Travel Inn Motel. He was found bent over the side of the bed, face down, and killed with an axe, hatchet, or machete.
Toothpaste had been squeezed into the toilet and Jack's wallet was missing from the room. The FBI has an alert out on all three of these cases and it ties them together. They're asking specifically for police agencies to come forward if they have any other similar cases on their books.
Specifically, the things that seems to tie them together is being found in a motel room off of a busy interstate, the toothpaste found in a weird spot of the room, and then being murdered with an axe, hatchet, or machete. Now over the years, there have been several suspects that have come to light in Rose and Roger's murder specifically. So one lead that police run down in 1980 is that the murder of Rose and Roger was done by cultists in the area.
According to police, reports of cattle in the area had been mutilated and sacrificed as part of a cult ritual. The newspapers reported that the group were ultimately looking for a human sacrifice and would have found this in Rose and Roger. Police never say officially that they rule this out, but this lead never seems to go anywhere. Police are also forced to look at Roger's coworkers who were working out on the assignment with him.
It was likely that some of his coworkers knew where he was headed that weekend and possibly even knew about Rose since she came to meet him during the work week. In addition, all of the telephone installers and repairers would carry a machete on them in the event they needed to cut down tall grasses in the course of their work. And of course, a machete is one of the suspected weapons that could have caused the injuries on Rose and Roger.
Galesburg, Illinois police have a suspect that they like in their case. And since they think that the murder of William Kyle and Roger and Rose are related, Galesburg police therefore believe that this man also murdered Rose and Roger. Their suspect is Raimundo Esparza. He was someone struggling with heroin addiction in 1980 and was facing houselessness. Multiple witnesses placed him at the Travel Inn Motel that evening with a bag of tools the night that William was murdered.
Esparza died in 1983. Later on in the investigation, police point to how the victims were found as possible clues as to who the murderer or murderers are. The fact that Roger was found only in his undershorts but Rose was fully clothed seemed to suggest to investigators that whoever the killer was, was likely someone that Roger was very comfortable with. Comfortable enough to undress in front of, but maybe someone that Rose didn't know as well.
This linked with the fact that there was no forced entry into the hotel room and the chairs that were pulled up to the side of the bed as if there was a conversation happening also suggested that the killer was known to them in some capacity. Police do heavily consider that Roger's wife, Marcella, or her family could be involved in the crime. This has turned up quite a bit when Marcella's uncle confesses to 16 murders.
Her uncle, Charles Ray Hatcher, was from St. Joseph, Missouri and was arrested for a murder charge when he first came to police attention. While in jail, awaiting trial for that murder charge, he slipped a guard a map that led police to another body. Charles Hatcher ends up being a serial killer. Five murders have been linked to him, but he confessed to 16. Even Roger's family think about Marcella and her family. They point to a few odd instances.
The day before the murder, Marcella stopped by her brother and sister-in-law's home and broke down crying, which was uncharacteristic of her. Larry Atkisson said, quote, did she know something was going to happen? End quote. They also pointed the fact that Marcella was the beneficiary for several life insurance policies that Roger had, and they can't shake the detail from the crime scene that the chairs were pulled up.
Larry says, quote, somebody more than one person sat there and talked before they did it. End quote. Marcella, of course, denies any involvement in her ex-husband's murder, and today she has become an advocate for his case. She had no idea that Roger was having an affair. She says, quote, it surprised me when I found out. I didn't know of this girl. I didn't even know she existed. End quote.
Marcella says that when her uncle confessed to the other murders, she herself went to the police to ask if he could have been involved. Police never get into specifics, but they say they rule Hatcher out as a suspect. Police also look at Rose's ex-boyfriend, who it seems she was genuinely scared of. Just weeks before her murder, she went to the police department and made a report that should anything happen to her, it was because of her ex-boyfriend.
He was stalking her at this time, sitting in a van outside of her home and work around the clock. She would often find threatening notes on her car windshield when she left work. Rose had bought a dog for protection, but she came home one day to find the dog killed and hanging in front of her house. She heavily suspected the ex-boyfriend. Rose was in the process of making a plan to move and change jobs in order to try to shake her ex-boyfriend.
Police say they rule him out when he has a strong alibi and he passes a polygraph test. Police also look at a farm hand that worked down the road from Rose's home in Savannah, Missouri. According to Rose, she had woken up once to find him standing over her bed. Police were able to put him in the Amana area on the night of the murder since there was a farm convention taking place nearby that had brought a lot of St. Joseph residents to the area.
As the last suspect I wanted to mention was the bartender at the Holiday Inn. There were reports that him and Rose had a confrontation in the bar area that evening. The bartender was living in his truck while working at the Holiday Inn. He often would just park his truck in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn and when he got off of work, he would still be on premises. The day after the murder, the bartender left town. He even left his last paycheck behind. He never picked it up.
When investigators are trying to find him to question him, they locate his truck that was left abandoned in Iowa City. It takes a few months, but police are able to finally track the bartender down to North Carolina, but he had enlisted in the Army at that point and had actually been stationed to Germany.
When police finally sit down with him to interview him, he says that he ran because he was nervous that police would blame him, that his lifestyle of living out of the truck would make him an easy target. Police say that it takes a few tries, but he eventually does seem to pass a polygraph test and they rule him out. But that is all we know about the murder of Rose Burkert and Roger Atkison.
So if you know anything regarding the unsolved double-slaying of Rose and Roger, 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 two.
I wasn't sure what I expected for part two, but I just really appreciate again, and I know I said it when we began the episode, but the details you've managed to kind of piece together for this to follow a narrative I think is, one, it's really cool just that you're my wife and it's cool to see you do this work, but that it's also important. I think the more a clear narrative is present in cold cases, the more likely it becomes that the case or cases can be solved.
So even when podcasts are doing this kind of work, I do think it makes a difference and I really think that it makes a difference here. Well, thank you. I struggled a little bit with how I wanted to structure, and if you're a longtime listener, you might realize that this episode is a little bit outside of how we normally even go about telling the case and going over the stories.
And hopefully our listeners enjoyed it too, and yeah, it just helps get more and more people talking about all of these cases, Rose, Roger, William, and Jack. All of these cases, kind of, it's difficult to speak about one without speaking about the others. So I'm glad that we expanded and just got more in depth, which brings me to my first question or maybe comment. The interstate being right there for all of them. It's such a key in these cases because it's an easy escape.
At least for me, you can tell that there was thought behind that this is very much planned. Yeah, the interstate, all of the hotels were just off of busy interstate. So like you said, easy in, easy out as far as a getaway. Everyone was away from their home, which just kind of makes you vulnerable in general. There were a lot of similarities in all of these cases, up to the toothpaste kind of being in weird parts of the room.
The FBI has an alert out with all of the details of these three cases because they seem to be so linked together. So it's like if there are any other cases out there, probably where there's toothpaste somewhere odd in the room, specifically in a hotel off of a busy interstate, that it's likely linked or could be linked in some way. That was my second note or comment, just that the toothpaste was present in a similar looking crime.
I don't know why, but that part of it just really, it gives me the heebie jeebies. I don't know. It's so odd. I don't know. I think maybe it's because it's an everyday item that all of us use each day and for it to be involved obscurely, but in such a violent sense. I don't know. Yeah, I just think the toothpaste, like how you said, it really does tie these cases together. And I just wanted to talk more about when you brought up cults.
And I don't know how much detail you have around that, but you know, if you engage with true crime, this was definitely a time where cults and satanic panic, I mean, that panic was everywhere for a while. So I really, I wanted to dive into this part of it a little bit just to have some more clarity there. Yeah, this definitely feels like that time where cults and like satanic panic were definitely like taking root and becoming these like scary monsters like lurking in every town.
That was definitely like starting to happen here. I don't have much information about like, kind of specifically who this cult would have been or like what they were after. Like, it just referred to cultists like going after cattle and like eventually they would want to do a human sacrifice. And it was happening around the Amana colonies, I believe it's like where that activity was happening. But outside of that, I don't know much about the cult, but it was mentioned a couple of times.
So it really was something they were looking into. Thank you for that clarification. I think it was just worth mentioning again, or circling back to the subject. And I know we're bouncing around a little bit, but there was you know, there was a lot of information. So these were some of the questions I walked away with are just like key points that I picked up on as I was listening to you. And the next thing I had written down was multiple life insurance policies.
I forgive me for not, I just couldn't remember who that was connected to. And I wanted just more details around that. So Marcella, that's Roger's wife at the time, was the beneficiary of I believe it was three different life insurance policies. I don't think it's necessarily that strange that there were three, none of them were really that large of an amount. Like it wasn't like a really like eyebrow raising amount. It was kind of normal when you added all of them up.
I can't remember off the top of my head, but I don't think it was more than $100,000. I don't even think it was really close to it. So that was just one thing that kind of made Roger's brother and sister-in-law like kind of suspicious of Marcella and her family. And especially knowing what Marcella's uncle was eventually convicted of, of being a serial killer that made them all very suspicious.
That part of learning the details of these cases was just, as I was listening, really what I said to myself was that that's very unfortunate because it makes it very difficult to not draw a connection after someone is convicted of being a serial killer. So I feel for her in this, it seems like she in the wake of all this like, you know, loss, she was also being surprised by a lot of information and not in a good way. So I just really feel for her. I hope that she's led a peaceful life since.
And I also thought it was really cool that she still advocated for him. I mean, of course, you know, but I'm glad that things worked out for her. Yeah, I believe she wrote a book or is very close to finishing up writing a book about this case in general and kind of like from her perspective too, like you said, like she found out like a lot of bad news throughout this.
One thing she mentions is like, you know, when police came to inform her about, you know, that Roger was dead, she was like, no, his ID was stolen because he's in Missouri. Like, he's not in Iowa. Like she was very confused about everything. She was like, someone stole his ID. It's not him. But ultimately, it was him. And you know, finding out about the affair through all of this too, it's, I can't imagine what she had to go through.
There are like some things that I would really love to know in all of this. Like I would really be interested just to know what the FBI profile said about the suspected killer. I imagine that the profile might have said that the killer or killers were known to Rose and Roger because that's something that the police feel pretty confident of later whenever they're talking about the investigation is that somebody, it was somebody that knew them. But then you have these other two tied in.
So could it just have been a random thing? And then the fact that no one heard anything like that to me raises a ton of questions because then it's kind of like, yeah, they probably knew the person because you think there'd be some shouting or yelling or something if somebody just like walked into your hotel room that you didn't know.
Yeah, I think the profile concept would shed a lot of light because the way in which these people were murdered was a very specific way down to, I think you said hatchet and axe maybe. But that's a specific instrument or weapon to use to kill someone. And there's also a skill set involved in handling an instrument like that. So the profile concept, I think, would shed a lot of light and bring some clarity that I hope we get to have someday. But it just, I don't know. Yeah, it's all very strange.
And it does suggest that there are two people because if you have to keep two people under control while you murder them in this specific way with an axe or a hatchet or machete, I think police eventually kind of ruled it down to a roofer's hatchet or a machete. So these are very specific weapons being used and something that would take a second. I guess I don't know for sure. But it's like two people, I don't know.
It's just like, how did you keep everyone under control and quiet while this was happening? That raises so many questions. And how is there not a bigger struggle? Just sounds, thumping, shouting. It's just, it boggles my mind how it happened. And then you also have that specificity with William and Jack's murder as well. The same weapon was used, which is not your everyday weapon.
Yeah, again, I think tying all of these together and discussing it in detail was really the right move here for our podcast. I'm really glad that we continued to dive into Rose and Roger's cases, but also Jack and Williams. I think it was kind of necessary. It makes more sense. The details of the first murders, not that they become any more clear to me, just that they are repeated overall makes the story or narrative and timeline more clear for me.
Yeah, this is one of those cases where it definitely feels solvable. There appears to be multiple crime scenes. So that's a lot of chances of evidence of DNA. I know there was a partial fingerprint that was lifted from the hotel room of Rose and Roger. So there are things out there. And in 2020, we learned we do have a DNA profile. So I think this case can be solved. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if more cases are eventually linked to it. The toothpaste, I keep coming back to that.
This is pure speculation on my part. But I wouldn't be surprised if once we find out who this is, other people come forward and they're like, yeah, I had an argument with him and he went into my bathroom and put my toothpaste everywhere or something like that. You know what I mean? Like it's such an interesting or odd thing to do. That's like I guarantee he's done it somewhere else.
But with that, if you know anything regarding the unsolved double slaying of Rose and Roger, please contact the Iowa County Sheriff's Office at 319-642-7307 or contact the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation at 515-725-6010. Thank you so much to everyone who rated and reviewed us. We had some really nice ones again come through this week. I appreciate it so much that you would take the time out of your day to leave such thoughtful and kind reviews.
And also, I'm so glad that so many of you are enjoying this podcast and listening week over week and case over case, like to see this audience grow and to see the community kind of grow around the podcast. It's been really incredible. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you for rating and reviewing. Thank you for listening. And thank you for sharing with other people like other folks who might be interested in these types of cases.
If you're not already, please follow us on our Instagram at Cold and Missing. There we will have pictures. We have pictures from last week as well that show some of the crime scene layout and a couple photos from the crime scene. Nothing graphic, but just a couple photos. And we also have on our website all of our old cases. So you can go in there. You can search by state.
And if you or someone you love needs a transcript, we have transcripts for all our episodes on our website, www.coldandmissing.com. But that's all I have. 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.