where he was at the time of his father s murder. he said he had an alibi and offered to take a polygraph test. the guy who gives it to me, he says, well, you passed the polygraph test. i says, passed it? he says, yeah. he says, you re a lousy liar, which, that s cool, you know? so, investigators turned their attention to sharon zachary, who not only lived next door to rogers but worked as his caretaker. sharon said she was with a friend shopping all day across town, but investigators discovered something suspicious. she made several large expenditures in the months leading up to rogers murder. she started spending money. from about january to around april, it s estimated about $65,000 was spent on her own personal items. she bought a new car, a boat, and took her family on a
zachary stole up to $120,000, and there was clear evidence that rogers discovered the embezzlement. sharon zachary was helping herself to mr. rogers funds, and mr. rogers apparently was not happy about that and had his power of attorney withdrawn to put a stop to sharon zachary helping herself to his money. sharon also found out that rogers planned to remove her from his will. i believe sharon zachary was in a hurry at that time to kill mr. rogers before he could make that change in his will. i believe greed is definitely what drove sharon zachary. the dna test results of the blood found on the metal pipe revealed the blood was robert rogers , more proof that it was the murder weapon. 31-year-old sharon zachary was charged with the murder of robert rogers.
he was a tough, old bird. he never pulled any punches. he was always a son of a bitch to me. rogers was stubborn, too. he always carried large sums of money and didn t care who knew it. he would joke that he would have several thousand in this pocket, several thousand in a pants pocket and a couple more thousand in his back pocket, and he generally did. not surprisingly, rogers became a target for local drug gangs and petty thieves. he was a victim several times of robberies. they would take his money from him, beat him up. his house had been broken into a few times also. so, yeah, it was a problem for him, but he didn t change his pattern, it seemed like. he still carried large sums of money. sharon zachary lived next door to rogers and acted as his caretaker. sharon zachary had become almost like a daughter to him. she would take care of him. she would look in on him. she would come and visit him.
details and figure out the direction of the print and what part of which finger to compare. after three days, they discovered the print on the victim s belt was the side of sharon s left thumb. when confronted with the forensic evidence, sharon denied she was the killer. she insisted she had no motive. but the victim s financial records suggested otherwise. in this case, we found a large sum of cash disappearing out of his account, routinely, over the time from january to april. that money went right into sharon zachary s account. sharon convinced him to give her a power of attorney, and sharon convinced him to give her a checkbook. and then when she got on to some of his checking accounts, and she just started using them as her own. records indicated that sharon
she was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. i m glad they got her, but i don t want to sound like i m out for vengeance, although if they wanted to kill her, i d volunteer. it was the shoe impression on a shard of glass and the partial thumbprint on the leather belt that solved the case. in my 12 years of doing latent print work, this case ranks an right up near the top, if not the most difficult latent fingerprint that i ve had to identify. so, this was a very, very satisfying case for me to be involved with. criminals always seem to make mistakes. i believe the mistakes in this case by sharon zachary were because she was fighting the clock. this trial would have never happened without the forensics. we had a clear motive, money.