In the aftermath of the fire in 1934 on the passenger liner Morro Castle, in which 135 passengers and crew died, there was considerable blame to be shared. The ship’s safety equipment was poorly maintained, the crew poorly trained and the ship’s officers made several questionable decisions which may have contributed to the rapid spread of the fire. How the fire started has never been determined. One man, George White Rogers, a radio officer, would be held up as hero. He stayed at his station transmitting “SOS” despite intense heat and smoke in the radio room.
Many now suspect that the “hero” of the Morro Castle may have set the fire on the ship and may have also murdered the ship’s captain.
Ship’s radio operator still likely suspect
George White Rogers had a troubled past and would have an even more troubled future. Two years after the Morro Castle fire, Rogers would be convicted of attempted murder of a co-worker in the Bayonne police department radio room, for which would serve three years in prison. He would later be convicted of a double murder of two elderly neighbors. Rogers died in prison in 1958.
A few years after the Morro Castle disaster, Rogers was working in the radio room of the Bayonne police department when people outside the FBI started suspecting he was the villain responsible for all the death and destruction caused by the fire on the Morro Castle.
Rogers developed a close friendship with his boss inside the radio room, Vincent Doyle. The friendship grew to a point that Doyle said Rogers confessed one night that he did in fact set the Morro Castle fire.
A few days later, Doyle received an unmarked package that blew up when he opened it, and Rogers was charged and found guilty of trying to kill him.
This scenario was familiar. Rogers had problems with the skipper of the Morro Castle, who died of what most thought was a heart attack just hours before the fire aboard the luxury liner started. Rogers was sentenced to 12 to 20 years in state prison, and rumors on the street whispered about a renewed investigation with Rogers as the Morro Castle suspect.
FBI director J. Edgar Hoover got personally involved in the investigation, but still no solid evidence ever surfaced — just a lot of circumstantial evidence Hoover’s FBI knew wasn’t good enough for a conviction.
Was George White Rogers responsible for the fire on the Morro Castle? Was he equally responsible for the death of all those people? And if he was responsible for all that death and destruction, is it possible he did murder Capt. Robert Willmott and start the fire to cover up his awful secret?
He took that secret to the grave, but many observers are convinced the answer to those question is “yes” on all counts.