From Disney to Death Row: The Oba Chandler Case That Shocked Florida
10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories
Joe Kuner
4.8 • 614 Ratings
🗓️ 1 August 2025
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Joan Rogers and her two teenage daughters took a wrong turn after their Disney vacation, they ended up in Tampa instead of heading home to Ohio. What should have been a simple request for directions turned into one of the most horrific crimes in Florida history. This is the story of how a charming stranger with a boat lured a grieving family into trusting him, and how his own handwriting eventually became the key to solving their murders.
We'll explore the man behind the monster - Oba Chandler, whose father's suicide when he was ten seemed to break something that never got fixed. From stealing cars as a teenager to escalating violent crimes as an adult, his path to becoming a predator was paved with red flags that society missed. You'll hear how a family vacation meant to help heal trauma became a tragedy that destroyed three lives, and how investigators spent three years chasing dead ends before a billboard campaign finally brought their killer to justice.
This case has everything that makes true crime both fascinating and heartbreaking - the randomness of evil, the power of evidence, and the determination of people who refuse to let monsters win. Joan, Michelle, and Christe Rogers deserved to come home from their vacation. Instead, they became the victims of a man who saw other people as nothing more than objects for his twisted pleasure.
#ObaChandler #RogersFamilyMurders #TampaBayMurders #TrueCrimePodcast #SerialKillerCase #FloridaMurders #DeathRowInmate
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Joan Rogers and her daughters were supposed to be driving home to Ohio after their Disney vacation. |
| 0:06.5 | Instead, they got lost and ended up in Tampa, where they met a guy named Oba Chandler, |
| 0:11.6 | who offered to show them the most beautiful sunset from his boat. |
| 0:16.0 | That was June 1, 1989. |
| 0:19.2 | Three days later, all three of them were found floating in Tampa Bay. |
| 0:23.4 | Today, we're talking about how a wrong turn, a sunset cruise, and some handwriting on a |
| 0:28.8 | billboard solved one of Florida's most brutal family murders. |
| 0:58.1 | Thank you. Some kids grow up with their fathers who are their absolute heroes. |
| 1:04.9 | Well, Oba Chandler had one of those dads, too, until he was 10 years old in 1957, and his father, |
| 1:09.7 | Oba Sr., decided to end his own life in the basement of their Cincinnati home. |
| 1:12.4 | Four kids watched their mother, Margaret Johnson, tried to hold the family together after that. Oba was the second youngest, and when they |
| 1:18.3 | lowered his dad's casket into the ground, this little boy literally jumped into the grave because he |
| 1:23.4 | couldn't bear to let his father go. That moment broke something in Oba Chandler that he never got |
| 1:29.7 | fixed. By 14, Oba had figured out he was pretty good at stealing cars. The problem was he was absolutely |
| 1:37.3 | terrible at not getting caught. 20 arrests as a juvenile will tell you everything you need to know |
| 1:42.9 | about his criminal aptitude. |
| 1:44.7 | But here's the thing about people like Oba. |
| 1:47.2 | They don't learn from consequences. |
| 1:49.7 | They escalate. |
| 1:51.1 | As an adult, his rap sheet read like a crime textbook. |
| 1:54.9 | Counterfeit money, burglary, kidnapping, armed robbery. |
| 1:58.5 | There was even an incident where he got caught masturbating while peeping |
... |
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