The Ice Box Murders: Based on a True Story

by Hugh Gardenier

On Father's Day, June 20th, 1965, Fred and Edwina Rogers of Houston received a surprise. They were murdered. When neighbors failed to see the old couple coming and going, they notified the police who didn't find anything amiss until they opened the ice box. Houston's most grisly double homicide remained unsolved until two forensic researchers cracked the case. Now the truth is revealed in this new and long awaited fact-based fiction by lawyer/CPA team Hugh Gardenier and Martha Gardenier.

Genres: Nonfiction, True Crime, Crime, Mystery

288 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2003

Reviews

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although it is a bit gorey at first, this book was a "must read" for me. I just happened upon it at Murder by the Book one day. This crime happened in my home town when I was a teenager. I always wondered what happened or if the case grew cold. This book almost satisfied my curiosity.....about 98% but there is still that 2% that is still haunting.

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is obvious that the authors did a lot of research and they did a terrific job considering that Charles Rogers left very little information about himself to be discovered. But the authors were not very good story tellers. There were several side characters that, although important to the unravelling of Roger's tale, were not appropriately developed and therefore confused the narrative quite a bit. I do like that they included historical background of Houston, but I found the section on the Mayor's escapades exceedingly dull. Finally, while I don't mind a detailed account of how the murders occurred, I did not appreciate being inside the murder's head during the perpetration of these murders. It was a little too voyeuristic and unnecessarily sensational. Good material, poor execution.

[Ronnie Cramer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I learned as much about this case in ten minutes of Web surfing as I did suffering through these 267 rambling, mind-numbing pages.

[Bettye McKee · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting partly truth/partly fiction account

The Ice Box Murders occurred in Houston in June 1865, and the case remains officially unsolved. The authors have written an interesting account of the murders. The partly fiction part adds significantly to the readability of the story.

It's hard to know who to root for because the victims were such thoroughly rotten people. The fact is that the Houston police made only a token effort to solve the crime because they were shut down by superiors.

There's a lot of history and background of the key players covering their activities both before and after the murders. The only thing missing is a proofreader.

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