Darren Benavides

Crazy 😳

15 year-old Kayla Berg, went missing from Antigo, in August of 2009. August 11, 2009 at 9:30 p.m.: 24 year-old Kevin Kielcheski, a family friend, takes Kayla to a McDonalds, where she makes plans with a friend to talk later that night. Around 8:45 that evening, Within hours, she requested to be dropped off at a house out in Wausau, and from there she disappeared August 12, 2009: Kayla’s father calls Hope Berg, Kayla’s mother, to let her know Kayla hadn’t come home. Hope begins contacting Kayla’s friends, including Kevin Kielcheski, but nobody seems to know where Kayla is. Kevin claims he dropped Kayla off at her boyfriend’s house in Wausau (about 35 miles from Antigo). August 13-18, 2009: after about 5 to 6 days, when questioning Kayla’s friends still hadn’t located her, Kayla’s mother finally calls police to report her missing. Police list her as an endangered runaway and also question Kevin, and Kayla’s 19 year-old, secret boyfriend, Miguel. October 2009: Kevin is charged with 2nd Degree Reckless Endangerment. Police search where he was living in Deerbrook at his parents’ home, and his vehicle is taken in. Police also search two areas in Lincoln County where Miguel’s phone had pinged the night Kayla disappeared. May 2011: Cadaver dogs search Kevin’s parents’ property, as well as the potato farm. Kayla is not found. June 15, 2011: Kayla’s father, James, passes away after a hard-fought battle with cancer. July 22, 2011: Charges are dropped against Kevin, due to lack of evidence. October 2016: A video is discovered on YouTube, posted back in 2011, now known as the “Hi Walter” video. This video features a man who appears to have a girl chained and held captive; the girl was said to resemble Kayla, and soon goes viral. This video is later found to be a fake, but not before it traumatizes Hope, Kayla’s mother. October 2019: A search is done in the Nicolet National Forest in eastern Langlade County. Kayla is not found. December 2023: An inmate in the Wisconsin State Prison System gives police a tip leading them to search in Kewaunee County, about 100 miles east of Antigo. Kayla is not found. To this day, Kayla has never been found, and no one has faced any consequences for her disappearance. Unfortunately, her father passed away never knowing what happened to his daughter. Her mother, Hope, is still looking for answers.

Crazy 😳

On the evening of June 23, 1965, Houston Police Captain Charles Bullock and his partner, L.M. Barta, were dispatched to the home of Fred and Edwina Rogers for a welfare check. Edwina’s nephew, Marvin Martin, hadn’t heard from his aunt for a worrying amount of time. Their knock was met with silence. So, the two police officers wound around the back of the house. They found a makeshift barricade of flower pots obstructing the back door, which made Bullock suspicious. When he and Barta pushed inside and entered the kitchen, his suspicions shifted into adrenaline. He later remembered that something “just didn’t feel right” inside the Rogers’ home. “I don’t know why I looked in the refrigerator,” he said. “For some reason I just opened it.” At first, Bullock and Barta thought what they were seeing was hog meat. Then they looked down. There, in the vegetable drawer, were two decapitated human heads. Edwina had been shot in the head; Fred had been bludgeoned with a hammer. But their killer had gone above and beyond simply killing the Rogers — he’d also dismembered the couple, removed Fred’s genitals, and flushed Fred’s intestines down the toilet. Quickly, the investigation into the Ice Box Murders pivoted to a single suspect — the couple’s 42-year-old son Charles. Charles Rogers lived with his parents. There was blood on the keyhole of his door. And he was nowhere to be found. Charles Rogers, the prime suspect in the Ice Box Murders, was no ordinary man. He had served in World War II, graduated with a degree in nuclear physics, and spent nearly a decade working for Shell Oil as a seismologist. He would leave home before dawn, and return after dark — but no one was sure if he actually had a job. He rarely even saw his parents in person and communicated with them by slipping notes under the door. As authorities pieced together the Rogers’ family life, they found that Charles might have had a motive to kill Fred and Edwina. Hugh and Martha Gardenier, Rogers had endured their manipulative behavior for years. They had taken out loans in his name, robbed him of his savings, and made his life a living hell. A nationwide search to find him, however, yielded nothing. Authorities even checked the local airfields, as Rogers learned how to fly while serving in the Navy. He was officially declared dead in 1975. But the mystery didn’t die with him. Indeed, some suspect that Charles Rogers did much more than kill his parents — and that he might have been involved in the plot to kill John F. Kennedy. Rogers was one of the so-called tramps spotted in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on Nov. 22, 1963. Charles Rogers had recorded his involvement in Kennedy’s death in his diaries. When his parents uncovered the diaries, he killed them. This allegation about Charles Rogers’ past remains unproven. But the Gardeniers claim to know where he ended up. They say that they traced Rogers’ movements to Mexico, where he purportedly landed a mining job through his oil industry connections. Allegedly, he himself was murdered — with a pickaxe — by miners in Honduras. In the end, if Rogers did manage to kill his parents and disappear, his theoretical work for the CIA isn’t as outlandish as it seems. After all, he left not a single trace, completed his mission — and vanished like a ghost.