The police arrived at the home of Fred and Edwina Rogers on June 23, 1965. The elderly couple’s nephew contacted them to do a welfare check after his phone calls had gone unanswered for days. At first, the officers didn’t notice anything too unusual in the home… until they opened the freezer. There they saw pieces of hog meat on the shelves which they thought nothing of. But as they were shutting the freezer door, they got quite a shock. The head of Edwina Rogers stared up at them from the vegetable bin. And those pieces of hog? Upon closer inspection they were actually the limbs and torsos of the couple, thus earning this case the moniker “the icebox murders.”
Martha Beck and Raymond Martinez Fernandez are a couple better known as “The Lonely Hearts Killers.” Raymond had gotten a head start on his criminal career before meeting Martha. He mainly committed petty crimes such as theft until 1947 when it’s believed he committed his first murder. In 1947 when Raymond responded to Martha’s lonely hearts ad in the newspaper, she was to be his next victim. Instead the couple ended up falling in love. When Martha found out about Raymond’s criminal past she thought it was a brilliant scheme. She joined him and together they used the personal ads to search for their victims. Those unfortunate women who were only looking for love were instead conned, robbed, and murdered. The lonely hearts killers are known to have killed four people, but may have had has many as 20 victims.
Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, “The Lonely Hearts Killers.”
Lillian Richey seemingly vanished into thin air in the early morning hours of February 9, 1964. There were very few clues left behind and the man who she was last known to be with was cleared as a suspect by police after extensive questioning. Though the case has been cold for many of the years that have since passed, there have been searches for Lillian as recently as 2018.
Lillian Richey
Lillian Richey was a 51-year-old widow who had been living alone since the death of her husband, James Lavelle Richey. Mr. Richey died two years before on April 26, 1962 while traveling to California. The couple had two grown sons, William Eugene (Gene) Richey and Dr. James Richey.
The mystery begins on the night of February 8, 1964 when Lillian went out for dinner and drinks at the Ranch Club in Garden City, Idaho with an old friend who was in town from California. This man has never been publicly identified, but it seems that he was visiting for a cattle convention that was taking place in Boise.
The pair agreed that the man would use Lillian’s car to drive her to her home on the 300 block of Sherman Avenue in Nampa, Idaho. The man would then drive her car back to his hotel in Boise with the expectation that he would return the car the next morning with a friend who would drive him back. Lillian offered to take the two men out to breakfast the next morning when they came to drop off the car.
Historic Horrors 