Customer Reviews

Death Cruise (St. Martin's True Crime Library)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

From cover to cover this reporting of the murder of three female family members at the hands of a vicious cold-blooded murderer in Florida is engrossing. The author creates an extremely easily readable tale of the victims lives before their meeting with their killer, how the lives intersected with one another while on vacation in Florida and the aftermath of the murders on the victims/killers familys, law enforcement personnel and the State of Florida residents themselves. It is a sad, shocking story and one that is definatly worth reading. A Classic! A footnote: As of my writing of this review the killer still sits on death row in the state of Florida at the age of 59, eleven years after receiving his death sentence.

Oba Chandler: a piece of dirt who took the lives of three women who were just trying to have a fun vacation away from their hard farming life. They drive to Florida and meet a monster who offers them a ride in his boat and then proceeds to rape and murder all three. What a sad story. Don Davis is a good author who pulls it all together for you. Gee, there are a lot of no good worthless pieces of ****out there!

I was a little disappointed in the book, as a resident of the Tampa Bay area I am very familar with the Roger's family - their pictures were plastered on billboards all over the area, serving as a reminder as to what can happen in paradise.

I was hoping that the book would add something I did not know about the case, it didn't - and the writing was not that good.

If you are really interested in this story, the BEST thing to read is a series written by Thomas French at The St Pete Times, it is incredibly eloquent, and beautifully written. Mt French won the Pulitzer for the story .. the title is Angels and Demons.

is abhorrent to me. There really are no words to adequately frame my thoughts on this man.. if there is such a thing as pure evil, I guess we found it here. I simply cannot imagine what Hal Rogers must have endured following the loss of his entire family.. I hope and pray that since this horrendous event, he has managed to find some measure of peace. A book well worth reading, if only to make us all aware of the old adage "Don't go with strangers".

Putting aside the numerous grammatical errors and misspellings, this book was very well written and provide an indept look into the crimes committed against the Rogers' finally as they vacationed in Florida in an effort to escape horrible transgressions against them by an uncle and brother-in-law in Ohio.

After reading this book, even the most liberal minded readers will remember just exactly why the death penalty is a form of punishment used in American justice. Oba Chandler is one of the most deserving criminal I have read about that deserves the death sentenced issued to him within 30 minutes by a Jury.

A sad story of a horrific crime, but one that you just can't put down!

What a horrible sad story...Like the other reader said in there review how do people like this walk our earth... He should be given the death penalty ASAP!..What was so sad is that this was there special vacation and too experience what they did and how this man murdered them is outrageous,I feel so sorry for Hal his entire family wiped out from under him from one sick sadistic crazy man's doing....The book is well written and doesnt drag on like some other books it tells the story and a sad one at that...This has to teach people that you can't trust anyone you don't know and you need to be cautious at all times especially if your not on familiar ground...Why on earth would these 3 women get on a strangers boat and go out to sea, what were they thinking...The looks of this loser in the pictures in the book you can tell he looked weird and yes sometimes we need to judge a book by its cover to protect ourselves...I would never ever have gotten on a strangers boat ...Anyway Hindsight is 20/20...This is a very sad story

This book takes you through Oba Chandler's life of a hard childhood, and his evil adulthood. His daddy had lived and died hard, and Oba was a rotten kid who used and discarded females later in life. HOW on earth did he find so many stupid women who didn't see past his lines and BS?? Don't talk to strangers is a good rule of thumb, ladies. Maybe the air wasn't fresh enough where they came from. Men like Oba Chandler are simply vultures parading around in human flesh, waiting for their prey. He played the role of Nice Guy, inviting unsuspecting vacationing women onto his boat, and the prey was winging towards his net! What he did to those poor Rogers women makes me absolutely SICK. This book makes you want to see all rapists stripped, slammed in the genitals and up the keyster with more pain and fear than they can bear. Death would be too good for Oba Chandler. The book is well written and I suggest it to anyone who can read it.

You don't want to believe that people like Oba Chandler walk the earth. The guy had no conscience. He really fits the term "scumbag." I find it so hard to understand why a woman who couldn't swim, and her two daughters who were uneasy swimmers themselves, would accept an ocean boat ride from a man they had just met. The mother wouldn't even let the girls go in the water on the beach! Obviously, they had no idea how vulnerable they would be on a boat surrounded by water. If the Death Penalty was made for one person, its Oba Chandler. He should die the way his victims did. They ought to go out on the ocean, tie and gag him, molest him, and then throw him overboard with a 40 lb. cement block tied to his neck. And as they are tossing him they should say, "Swim for it."

This revolting monster's (I cannot call him a man) name came to my attention a couple weeks ago. It was on the news that he was submitting his last minute appeals to try to save his butt from his just desserts in Florida. As one of the investigators of this crime said, he is the poster child for the death penalty. I downloaded the book and, coincidentally, finished it yesterday, a few hours after he ate his salami sandwiches. He was a career criminal, robbing, molesting and raping people his entire life. If there was ever someone without conscience, he was it.

I gave this book 4 stars for the job the author did in writing the story. The content, however, was truly disturbing. I can only imagine the extent of the emotional and physical torment that Jo, Michelle and Christe Rogers suffered at this putrid monster's hands. And I can only imagine the grief that consumed Hal Rogers, grief he is still suffering from even today, 22 years later. To have his entire family wiped out because of one wastrel's sick fantasies. I've no doubt in my mind that he would have also killed Gayle Arquette and her friend, had her friend accompanied her and Chandler on their boat ride.

This book will stay with me for a long time, in the same way Small Sacrifices, the story of Diane Downs and her 3 children has. Oba Chandler was evil incarnate. He had no remorse. Lethal injection was too humane for him. So would have been the electric chair. An eye for an eye was what he deserved. He should have been taken out in the bay, at night, hogtied, with a concrete block tied to a rope around his neck, told to 'swim for it', and he should have been tossed overboard.

The Rogers' girls went to Florida on vacation, to take some, surely, much needed time away, after Hal and Jo Rogers learned what had been happening to their daughter Michelle. That, alone, was too much. They went to Florida, but they never returned. Chandler never once expressed a moment of remorse or regret, and then what really irked me was that he had the audacity to complain, constantly, about his uncomfortable lodgings, and how his civil rights were being violated in the way he was being treated in jail. As I said, he had no conscience.

I hope, with the elimination yesterday of this degenerate's vile presence on this earth, that it will bring Hal Rogers some measure of peace. He has suffered more than anyone should ever have to. I also hope he has managed, somehow, to find some happiness in his life. And the same for Gayle Arquette. She was, even though her experience was horrible as well, instrumental in bringing him down. Her courage was amazing.