to look for his wife and daughters before he was notified of their deaths. Investigations proved conclusively Hal had not left Ohio during that period. The assaults of Michelle Rogers by her uncle and gossip by local people was one of the reasons for the Florida trip; Joan and her daughters wanted to distance themselves from the incident. Trial Chandler's testimony At his trial in Clearwater, Florida, Chandler said he met Joan, Michelle, and Christe Rogers and gave them directions but he never saw them again except in newspaper coverage and on billboards. He acknowledged he was in Tampa Bay that nightthe police had evidence of three ship-to-shore telephone calls made from his boat to his home during the time frame of the murdersbut Chandler maintained he was fishing alone. He said he had returned home late because his engine would not start, which he attributed to a gas line leak. He also said he had called the Coast Guard and the Florida Marine Patrol, and had flagged down a patrol boat, but both were too busy to help. He said he subsequently fixed the line with duct tape and returned safely to shore. There were, however, no records of distress calls from Chandler to either the Coast Guard or the Marine Patrol that night, nor were there any Coast Guard boats on the bay the following morning that could have helped him. According to a boat mechanic who testified for the prosecution, Chandler's explanation of repairing the boat's alleged gas leak was not tenable because the fuel lines in his boata Baylinerwere directed upward. A leak would have sprayed fuel into the air rather than into the boat and the gasoline would have dissolved the adhesive of the duct tape Chandler maintained he had used to repair a leak. Under questioning from Pinellas County prosecutor Douglas Crow, Chandler then said he could not remember. Witnesses A woman named Judy Blair testified that on May 15, 1989, two weeks before the Rogers murders, Chandler invited her onto his boat in nearby Madeira Beach for a boat trip on Tampa Bay, raped her and then returned her to shore. Blair had been with her friend Barbara Mottram, who refused Chandler's offer to join them on the boat. After Blair was raped, she told the court she returned to her hotel room where Mottram was waiting. Chandler was not charged with this