WARNING: Roger Hueber

0:00Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And the story I have for you today is true to the title. A warning for our viewers, especially the ones in New York, but a reminder for all Crime Junkies to be careful who you trust. So let's dive in. Thank you. Our story begins on January 6th, 2005 in Lockport, New York, which is this small city about 40 minutes outside of Buffalo. There is this 16-year-old special education student who I'm going to call Emily. She has been working with a school administrator on ways to like better express herself because she's going through a lot at home at the time. She's been dealing with a lot of trauma and her multiple disabilities make it really hard for her to like work through that and process things like all the things going

1:19on around her. So working with this person, this administrator and a psychologist, she begins to journal to try and get out the things that she's going through and feeling on paper. Maybe that would be an easier way for her to share information with them. And it is. She writes about her home life, about the books that she reads, and about one of her few friends named Megan. She's actually another female student in the high school special education program. But what Emily is writing about her is deeply concerning. Because Emily writes that 17-year-old Megan is in a relationship with someone named Roger, an adult man who works in law enforcement. And they have been doing things that apparently make Emily uncomfortable. And whatever it is was clearly intended to be kept secret because Roger specifically told Emily that this school administrator better not find out about him. Which, as you can imagine, makes this administrator determined to find out not just about what's going on, but who exactly this Roger is. And she knows exactly who to ask because her husband is a deputy with the Niagara County Sheriff's Office and he helps her connect the dots. Roger was apparently not a very common name

2:37in the area at that time. Law enforcement Roger is 41-year-old Roger Huber, who is employed by the same department, but he actually works as a correctional officer at the local jail. So she calls the jail superintendent and keeps it simple. Tell Roger Huber to leave my students alone. Now, at first, this administrator doesn't expect it to go any further than that. She assumes that the department will deal with it quietly. But someone at the jail takes it up the chain because pretty soon an investigator from the sheriff's office, this guy named Joe Taylor, contacts her and says that he is formally investigating the allegations against Roger. Thank God. And good because realistically, I mean, she was a mandatory reporter. Like, it should have been more official than that. And I actually checked with my sister-in-law, who's a vice principal, and she's like, absolutely, you're not supposed to, like, go investigate or see what's what. You just, like, you hear something. Report, and that's, yeah. Yeah, so at least when it gets told to them, it got up the chain. Now, here is where it gets tricky. The age of consent in New York is 17. So it's actually not illegal for Roger to be in a sexual relationship with 17-year-old high school student Megan.

3:54I mean, not even if she's a special needs student? No, that is not a factor. It is only about age. So really, the investigation that ensues is just trying to determine if the relationship started before Meghan was 17. Now, Joe Taylor tries to go right to the source with Meghan. He reaches out to a woman that he describes as the mother figure of Meghan's house. But that woman says that talking to Meghan is probably going to be a waste of his time, because according to her, Meghan would never be honest about what is going on between her and Roger. She would protect him. Yeah, based on the little snippet we got from Emily's diary, I'm sure that he has made it very clear to Megan, because he made it clear to Emily, that people shouldn't know about their relationship. So, Investigator Taylor decides to go directly to Roger with the allegations instead. Now, when he asked the jail supervisor to send Roger over to the criminal bureau, it's casual. Like, Taylor doesn't have enough to charge him or arrest him or even Mirandize him. Like, this is just a chat. But he asked Roger how he knows Megan. And Roger says that, you know, he's known her for like six or seven years since back in 1998 when she would have been about 10 or 11 years old. And she's really close with the family now

5:11because she is friends with Rogers' 13-year-old son. And she's over at his house almost every day babysitting his eight-year-old daughter. Wait, is there a Mrs. Huber in the picture? Not technically then. So he had been married before, though. Like, that is who he had three of his four kids with. Then his fourth kid, the eight-year-old, he had with this long-term girlfriend who did live with him when this was all going down in 2005. Now, in the end, Roger denies ever having a sexual relationship with Megan and even agrees to take a voice stress test before Investigator Taylor lets him go. OK, but I want to know what his live-in girlfriend has to say about all this. Taylor does, too. But it has to be handled the right way because Taylor quickly learns how complicated things are. So his girlfriend is 33-year-old Cheryl Rucci. And Cheryl, like Megan and Emily, had a learning disability that affected her mental development. So even at 33, her cousin, who we spoke to, put her mental age at about 16. And it seems like Roger manipulated her into being both victim and perpetrator. You see, Cheryl's mom and stepdad are corrections officers,

6:28and they worked in the same department as Roger when Cheryl was growing up. Her brother is even a corrections officer now, too. By the time Cheryl was 15 or 16, Roger was divorced, and Cheryl started babysitting Roger's kids, sometimes at Roger's house. You mean like Megan did? Yeah. So fast forward about 10 years to when Cheryl is 25. She's then living with Roger, having a baby with him, and being a full-time stay-at-home mom to his three other kids. Like she has her baby in 1997. 1998 is when he meets Megan. I mean, this feels like a cycle of grooming. But there are more than just Cheryl and Megan in it. And the way that he would use one victim to prey on the next, I think, is part of the process as well. So Investigator Taylor ends up learning that while Emily may have just written in her journal about Megan, Roger has been sexually aggressive with her too. She says that over the summer, Roger played a pornographic movie in front of her and asked her to show him her breasts. And another time, Roger took her and some other minors out on a motorboat to go tubing. Cheryl was there, some other adults too,

7:44and there was alcohol on board, and at least one minor was drinking. But when they got out on the water, you know, basically stuck with no way to get away, Roger, Cheryl, and the other adults got naked in front of these minors. Roger also exposed himself another time to Emily. One New Year's Eve, he took her and Megan to a movie, and after, they all went to a motel, and when Megan went out to get a drink, that's when he exposed himself. And we know by that point, Roger had already had sexual contact with Megan, because through his investigation, Taylor learns that sexual contact with her began in the spring or summer of 2004, when she possibly wasn't 17 yet. And he's told of a time in December that Roger had sexual contact with Megan at a gym in front of her 12-year-old cousin and in the presence of a two-year-old. Which is like conditioning these other kids to think that this is all normal. That is exactly what I'm saying. It wasn't just a single person caught in Roger's web. But at the center of it with him was Cheryl Rucci. Except it seems like she was ready

8:59to break the cycle of abuse. By the time Investigator Taylor sits down with her, she says that she has just left Roger because he told her that he didn't love her anymore. And according to her cousin, Roger was really ugly to Cheryl during this time. So maybe that's why Cheryl is even willing to talk to Taylor. Maybe the fact that she's now fighting for custody of her own eight-year-old daughter, who would be in a house alone with Roger, is why she shares a bombshell that will do Roger in for good. Probably something that Roger thought she would have taken to her grave. Cheryl Rucci tells investigator Taylor that in the summer of 1999, she and Roger sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl. Together. Like a broken record, the story goes like this. Roger was close with the girl's family. He'd known her since she was a baby. She was in his orbit well before it happened. He made her family feel comfortable with him, made this child feel comfortable with him, before he and Cheryl abused her. Cheryl gives enough

10:17details and specifications that she essentially hands Roger over to them on a silver platter. But in doing so, she is basically signing herself up for the same fate. Right. Did she realize that she was doing that when she was talking to them? I think she did. I mean, she didn't have a lawyer or anything when she talked to them. So I don't know how much she contemplated, like or how much she could contemplate the repercussions that might come from this. But I think she was driven to confess out of fear. Her family felt that for her whole adult life, Roger had his thumb on her. They told us that while she worked on and off a little bit throughout her life, she never really had a steady job. She'd always been easily manipulated and controlled by Roger, both financially and emotionally. And her cousin, who we spoke to, said that they never saw any sign of physical abuse, but Cheryl was clearly afraid of the guy, and he had threatened to take their daughter away from her. And I think the fear of losing her daughter, of what would happen to her daughter, that could have been the big driver of why she was willing to confess, no matter what it meant for her. Now, of course, when Investigator Taylor confronts Roger with this in a formal interview on March 15th, he denies

11:33all the allegations against him. Like, sure, yeah, he knows this girl, like he was at all these places, but like all of it's totally innocent, he says, like nothing to see here. But the thing is, they don't need him to confess. They have enough by that point to arrest him on felony sex crime charges tied to the 1999 allegations that Cheryl told them about. But that means that what they will need is Cheryl to testify against him. So probably deciding that she was the lesser threat of the two, they offer her a plea deal if she will agree to testify against Roger, which her family said that she was planning to take so that she could be with her own daughter. Now, we don't know the exact details of the deal. Investigators wouldn't confirm anything to us other than the fact that there was a deal. Is it not documented somewhere? So it might be, but the DA's office won't release anything related to Cheryl's case to us. But here's what I know. So on August 9th, 2005, Cheryl was at this cookout at her apartment complex. And according to her family, some friends told her that Niagara County Sheriff's deputies had been there earlier looking for her. They were trying to serve her

12:50with a subpoena to testify before the grand jury. Apparently, Cheryl got upset. She started calling family, including her mom, but no one picked up. She left her mom a voicemail asking her to call back. But when her mom eventually gets that message and tries, she can't get a hold of Cheryl. So her family starts looking for her. They start calling around. And by the next night, August 10th, they report her missing because no one can find her. And to them, the circumstances are deeply concerning. Like, we're talking about a witness in a sex abuse case against a corrections officer who just disappeared before she could testify against him. But her family told us that authorities did not view the circumstances in the same light they did. They all met at Cheryl's apartment to look for her that night, family and law enforcement. And there were no signs of a struggle. Nothing was a mess. And even though they took some investigative steps you would expect for a missing persons case, like taking items from her place for testing, they ran, you know, canines trying to track her scent, a family member said that they were told that Cheryl probably just ran away to avoid testifying. More than that, an investigator apparently told Cheryl's sister that Cheryl was just a crackhead whore.

14:07And if they give him 10 days, he'll find her body in Niagara Falls. What? Well, 10 days come and go. And guess what? No Cheryl. So now she's not only missing, she will eventually get listed as a fugitive. And does this department know about Roger's case? Like the details, the fact that she's the witness? Britt, it is being handled by the same department. And this is the same department, I'd like to remind you, that Roger worked for. Yeah. And okay, do they not believe in like a conflict of interest in New York? I don't know how this is flying. It's kind of unbelievable. Yeah. And, okay, do they not believe in, like, a conflict of interest in New York? I don't know how this is flying. It's kind of unbelievable. Yeah. Now, I do need to say that while the family says that law enforcement seemed to have a one-track mind and write Cheryl off as a fugitive in the wind, the current investigator told us that all possibilities, including foul play, were explored from the jump. Either way, Cheryl's disappearance doesn't actually stop the case against Roger from moving forward. Investigator Taylor is allowed to read Cheryl's written statement to the jurors. And by the time it gets to that, they have built out a bigger picture of what Roger had been doing. All the stuff with

15:26Megan, Emily, the boat, the alcohol, the motel, that was all going to be part of their case now, too. And Emily, the student whose journal started this whole thing, she was expected to be a witness in the case. So even without Cheryl there in the flesh, on September 1st, the grand jury who was presented the case against Roger indicts him on 21 counts. I'm not going to read every single one because it's a lot, but I'll give you like the highlights from the 20 that actually stick. So there are multiple counts of rape, sodomy, sexual abuse tied to that 1999 allegation involving that 14-year-old girl. They also charge him with endangering the welfare of children, unlawfully dealing with a child for allegedly giving alcohol to a minor, criminal contempt for allegedly violating an order of protection, and a firearm charge connected to his job as a peace officer. And you said indicted on 21, but only 20 stick. I gotta know about the one that didn't stick. There was a charge related to the New Year's Eve incident with Emily and Megan in that motel room. It turns out the motel was in a different county, so that got dropped. Oh, okay. Now, Roger pleads not guilty to all 20 counts. Roger makes bail. He walks out.

16:42But does he go home and sit on his hands and stay out of trouble while he waits for his day in court? No. Of course not. No, he walks out. But does he go home and sit on his hands and stay out of trouble while he waits for his day in court? No. Of course not. No, he does not. He starts trying to intimidate witnesses or at least one witness. Three different times over the course of a few weeks in December, Emily saw Roger drive his green truck behind her while she was walking near his street. And he would like swerve right at her, getting close enough that she could almost reach out and touch his vehicle. And there was like no question that this was him. I mean, for one, this man has a vanity plate that says Huber. But like also at least one of the times Megan was in the passenger seat of the car when it came close to her. And Emily wrote in her journal that one time Megan approached her and threatened her to try and get her to change her testimony. I mean, it feels like he's using Megan like he used Cheryl. He's got her so wound up in his crosshairs that I think she sees Emily as the enemy. Or at the very least, she is willing to do Roger's bidding, no matter how she sees Emily. These incidents end up getting reported to authorities, and prosecutors use this to get Roger's bail revoked. And while he's sitting in prison, the case that his defense team was building

18:00really starts falling apart because they had a witness who I guess was there for the 1999 incident and originally gave the defense a signed statement saying that what Cheryl described never happened. But before we get to trial, that witness flips and she was going to testify that everything did happen exactly like Cheryl said it did. Why the change of heart right before trial? Well, apparently Roger's estranged daughter. So this would have been his daughter with his ex-wife, not the daughter he shares with Cheryl. She knew about this 1999 incident as well. And she told the witness that you shouldn't lie. Like you've got to tell them what happened. And based on that, she decided to tell the truth. And Roger sees the writing on the wall after this. So this is when he decided to take a plea. He pleads guilty to second-degree attempted rape and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child. And at his sentencing, which happens on June 5th, 2006, the judge tells him, I think you are a threat. I think you are a predator. I think you prey on young girls. I think you have an inability almost to avoid that. And then the judge gives him the

19:20maximum sentence, which is 16 months to four years in state prison. In a pre-sentence interview, Roger had described what he did this way. He said, quote, I have three beautiful, naked women in front of me and took advantage of an opportunity. And let's be very, very clear. One of those women was a 13-year-old kid. Right. Now, the prosecutor points out something else that I think is important. She speaks to Cheryl's role in all of this. And she said that Cheryl was someone who was very controlled by Roger. And these were his fantasies, not hers. Cheryl didn't introduce this to their relationship. He did. Roger seems to disagree with that because later at a parole board interview in 2007, he tries to put a lot of what happened on Cheryl, saying she invited the girls over. He didn't know how old they were. Like one girl told me she was 18. Cheryl told me that too. I mean, I believe this 0%. You are a man in your 40s. You don't need to check a birthday when you see a 13-year-old girl. They're in middle school. Come on. And listen, one parole commissioner calls him out on this like absolute bullshit.

20:37She basically says like, how convenient is it that now it's all Cheryl? Like the girls were friends of hers. She brought them home. And you're just this like innocent victim who didn't know like how old they were or like who they were. And like, oh, like, again, how convenient that Cheryl has been missing for more than a year now by this point and isn't around to defend herself. And that's when Roger pushes his narrative here by saying, well, she's on the run, I guess. And that is an insulting insinuation to Cheryl's family. Because from their point of view, Cheryl wasn't just a missing person. She was supposed to testify in a sex abuse case against someone who worked for the very same department that is now investigating where she went. And every day over the past year without word from her, they only became more and more convinced that she didn't leave on her own. They think something bad happened to her. And to them, the evidence was there from the beginning. Cheryl's daughter said that her mom used to walk her to school, take her to the park and the movies. One time she even got a job at her school so that they could walk home together. She told us that Cheryl was loving and kind. She was family oriented and that she doesn't think she would ever have just walked away from her. More than that though, like Cheryl didn't have a cell phone

21:53or credit cards or a driver's license. And like, sure, like she could have taken the bus or something, but how is she gonna get by? They told us that the first night when they reported her missing and they went with police to check her apartment, Cheryl's shoes were by the door, exactly where she always left them. Her purse was still there. The whole place was clean besides a couple of beers. And yes, they took those, checked those, no DNA on those. It looks like she just stepped out with just the clothes on her back and was going to come right back. And based on the last reported sighting of her back and was going to come right back. And based on the last reported sighting of her, that might actually have been the case. And more than all of that, the thing that they say is Cheryl was chatty. Like she would call her family every day, multiple times a day, especially when she wasn't working or didn't have her daughter and she got bored. Like they would call her Nancy nine times. Like she wouldn't go long, like even a day without calling. Now, from law enforcement's point of view, Cheryl's last confirmed sighting is at about 9 p.m. on August 9th. This is like the same day she was at that cookout, heard about the sheriff's looking for her. And they say that at 9 p.m., some neighbors reported seeing her around the apartment complex. And some people said she might have even been barefoot and

23:10taking out the trash at the time, which makes sense with her shoes being inside the apartment. But if she walked out without her shoes, it doesn't seem like she would have gone far, right? And interestingly, I don't know if you remember, so they brought canines in to like track her scent when she first went missing. Well, according to family members and some early reporting on this case, the trail that got picked up seemed to go from Cheryl's apartment to a nearby skating rink. And investigators do get reports from witnesses who saw a car in the area that night. But they got like multiple descriptions of what that car looked like. Even though it doesn't seem like anyone saw Cheryl get into that car, like that is what makes the most sense to me, like with the canine scent ending there. Yeah. And if she gets in the car, then she probably went off with someone she knows. Presumably. I mean, that's what I would think. But it would seem like that couldn't have been Roger because we find out he always had an alibi. He was supposedly with his and Cheryl's daughter at the movies that night. Like, he had her that night. That's why Cheryl was alone at her apartment when she went missing. But here's the thing. So for years, right, we've thought he had an alibi. We actually spoke to their daughter

24:25for this episode. We talked to her about the night her mom went missing and she dropped this huge bombshell. She said, yes, they were supposed to go to the movies, but that movie night got canceled. Roger ended up dropping her and her brother off at their grandma's, like Roger's mom's house. Which means there was a stretch of time where from her point of view, Roger was on his own. Or at least she doesn't know where he was. But would Cheryl have actually gotten into a car with Roger? I don't know. I mean, but like who's saying that she got in the car willingly? I guess why else would she have been at the skating rink? Well, that I don't have. I mean, but like who's saying that she got in the car willingly? I guess why else would she have been at the skating rink? Well, that I don't have an explanation for because, I mean, it's not like it shares a parking lot with her apartment complex or anything like it's like across this like major road. So I agree. Like if she went that way. It's like intentional. Yeah. For a reason. And the thing is, like, if you remember, we know she called her mom when she heard that someone was looking to serve her with a subpoena. But the huge unanswered question I have is like, who else might she have called when her mom didn't pick up? The current investigator wouldn't even confirm for us whether they even pulled Cheryl's phone records, much less like what they showed if

25:41they did. OK, but if you're going to call someone to meet you or pick you up, like why not just have them come to your apartment? Like why meet at the skating rink? I don't know. None of it makes sense. And maybe it's because like that didn't happen. Maybe the scent that tracked her was old, or maybe it didn't track to like the skate rink at all, because we tried to verify this detail with the current investigator, and all he would say is that dogs were used in that initial window when Cheryl was reported missing. But he couldn't say that the trail was ever concretely verified. Again, I don't know the difference between couldn't and wouldn't tell us. Right. So I don't know, maybe the skate rink is just this red herring. He did tell us, though, that over time, more resources were put into locating Cheryl, not as a fugitive, but as a missing person. He said they followed up on more than 200 leads. And according to an article in the Lockport Union Sun and Journal, they did land searches. They did sonar searches in a nearby lake. They sent out cadaver dogs at one point, but they never found any sign of Cheryl. In 2011, the sheriff finally said that investigators believed that Cheryl was a victim of foul play and that she didn't leave on her own. Investigators even searched Roger's old home once

27:00it was foreclosed on. They didn't find anything, but even with this change of heart, I cannot help but believe that the early assumptions that they made did like irreparable damage to Cheryl's case. Stuff that's going to be so hard to come back from because there are some tips and leads that like once they're passed up on, you don't really get a second chance. And there is this one tip in particular that I think is a shining example of that. This witness story that has never been reported on before. Now, the current investigator told us that her account is noted in the original case file, but we spoke to her directly. Now, this witness is a local woman who I'm going to call Amy. And on the night that Cheryl disappeared, again, this is August 9th, 2005, she saw something that she has never been able to forget. On the night Cheryl disappeared, around 10, maybe 10.15 at night, Amy was driving to work, taking this rural road near the woods off State Route 78. And she spots this, like, teal four-door car that's pulled over to the side of the road with its lights on.

28:21So Amy pulled up behind it. She thought that maybe the car broke down. Someone might need help. Again, not a lot of traffic on this road. And when she gets out, she can see that there is a woman inside the car. She's young looking, tan with dark hair. And she seemed like she was trying to talk to Amy. She was like talking fast, like she was anxious or scared. But there was also like music blaring from the stereo inside the car. And the woman inside wasn't rolling down the window so that Amy could hear her better. So while Amy is trying to like make sense of this, something catches her eye on the side of the road. And it's like this huge, incredible Hulk-like figure walking out of the brush back toward the car, back toward where she was standing. And that's when Amy could finally read the woman's lips. She was saying, go, go, go. So Amy runs back to her car and speeds off just enough to get out of Dodge. And she uses her car's like emergency system to call for help before she decides to circle back. She knew that the woman shouldn't be left alone. Like every fiber of her being was telling her that that woman was in danger because like it finally hit her why the woman might not have been rolling down the window. Because Amy realized

29:38that the entire time she was there by the car, she never once saw the woman's hand. So she's thinking like, oh my God, maybe she was like bound in some way, which is just all the more concerning. Now, when Amy gets back to the spot, the car is still there, but now the lights are off and the woman is gone. So is the man that came walking out of the brush. And Amy looks up and down this road, but nobody is walking in either direction, which just gives her the eeriest sense that both of them disappeared into the woods. Now, Amy has enough self-preservation sense about her to know that she can't just go into the woods to find them. Authorities have to. Except authorities don't show up. What? At least not for as long as she waited out there. Now, we don't know exactly where Amy's emergency call was routed to. I don't know who got it. I don't know what was entered into the system in real time. Now, the current investigator told us that Amy's sighting was noted in the case file, which we don't have access to because when we requested it, our request was denied. But he said that the call was followed up on and he wouldn't say how. Cool. But like,

30:53as far as Amy's concerned, right, like she thought no one came out. So a couple of days later, when she is at home, she sees Cheryl's photo on the news. And she recognizes Cheryl as the woman she saw in the car. So obviously, Amy calls up the police right away because she wants to make sure someone knows about what she witnessed, right? Because she doesn't know. Like, she didn't talk to anyone. But their response is mind-boggling. Amy says that the detective outright told her that Cheryl wasn't worth looking for. Which is what they had basically told her family. Amy claims that the detective said that Cheryl got into this mess herself and now she's trying to get out of it. What does that even mean? That doesn't even feel to me like, oh, like she ran away. This feels like she deserves whatever's coming to her. Yeah. And it's coming from somebody who's employed by the same law enforcement office where Roger was employed. Listen, I don't know who told her that, but this idea that people had Roger's back or had reason to cover for him, dude, I can't even tell you how deep it goes. Like, for legal reasons, literally, it's something that we're still digging into.

32:09But let me just tell you, like, real quick, side story here, two interesting tidbits that we stumbled upon. Because Cheryl's cousin told us that a woman who knew Cheryl commented publicly in a Facebook group that she was sexually assaulted in Roger's home after being served alcohol. In the comments, the woman said that she was underage at the time and the man that she accused was and still is a member of the Niagara County Sheriff's Office. We reviewed the screenshots of those comments taken before they were deleted. We also reached out to the man accused and the current sheriff and the deputy sheriff for their responses to those allegations, and we have not heard back. We also heard from Cheryl's family that Cheryl had turned over some tapes to the sheriff's office right before she went missing. Now, I'm being like vague about like what's on them, whatever, whatever. Because I have questions. Still digging. But the current investigator said that he is familiar with the claim that those tapes exist, but he hasn't seen documentation of their verified existence in the missing person case file available to him. So if these tapes are real, we don't know where they are now, whether they were logged somewhere else returned lost destroyed or

33:25never actually turned over in the first place and obviously we reached out to roger about the tapes and all this but we have not heard back from him and speaking of roger this man is hard to miss like homeboy is scary looking so to bring it back to am and her story, when she eventually saw Roger, she did think that the bald, stocky, muscular, Hulk-like figure that she saw walking out of the brush that night was him. Now, police blowing Amy off wasn't even the end of the saga. About two and a half weeks after that initial incident, Amy was driving past the same area where the car was. And she noticed this foul odor coming from the woods near where the car had been. And she told us that she drove that route all the time. She had never smelled anything like that before. So she doesn't think it was like a dead deer or a random animal or something. But the thing is, Amy didn't report it that time. She had already called investigators and got dismissed. So she was afraid of being labeled as like a nuisance caller. But she did say that later she spent years trying to get cadaver dog teams like back to that location where she saw the car.

34:41That's kind of hard to do as one individual with no law enforcement connections. Okay, girl, what are we waiting for? Don't tempt me with a good time in the shovel, but I would, but I don't want to get in the way because I actually have some kind of good news. The current investigator who took this case over in 2023 has been doing some legwork on this. He wouldn't tell us much about what he's doing, but when we got court records from Rogers' prosecution, I'm talking like hundreds of pages, transcripts, motions, orders, indictments, in it was a receipt showing that materials from the original case file were checked out and then returned to the DA's office custody in July of 2025. So we're talking just a year ago. And this included like Cheryl's own written statement to investigators, a statement from another witness, a letter, materials from a case that had been closed for nearly 20 years, got pulled a year ago and reviewed by someone. Now, I don't know exactly what, who had those files or what they were doing with them or whatever. But what the current investigator would say to us is that at some point in the last couple of years, he did put in a request for a trained search and rescue organization to come and search this area in question. Now, we spoke to the founder of Western New York Missing and Unidentified Persons,

36:00an advocacy organization that helped push for the search, which finally happened in November of 2024. And they told us that the team searched, they didn't find anything, but caveat, they felt like they had more work to do. She said that the team wasn't able to cover everything that they wanted to that day, and they haven't been able to get back out there with law enforcement since. Even if nothing is there now, though, that doesn't mean there was, like, never anything there. This is exactly my point about the lost time. Like, it is, it's terrible. Like, I don't, I don't know what has been lost that we can't get back. Wait, if police actually followed up on it like they said they did, like, wouldn't they have gotten a plate number or something on that car, like, to know whose it was? So I don't know what they did, right? Like, they won't tell us. But Amy said that she actually recorded at least a partial plate number that night. I mean, she knew something was up. She was there with the car. She gave that to police. The only thing we know is that the registered car didn't apparently match the description of like this teal four-door car. Now, my next question, okay, what car did it match? The current investigator wouldn't get into any specifics about the partial

37:17plate itself, who it came back to, what other kind of vehicle it could have been registered to. But what I think is so interesting, Britt, remember how witnesses reported seeing a car like near the skating rink the night that Cheryl disappeared? So the current investigator told us that one of the multiple vehicle descriptions, remember there was different ones, but one of them was a teal or blue car. Now, I don't know who that teal or blue car could belong to. But when we talked to Amy, she said that the teal car that she saw looked like a Chevy Caprice style sedan. And so obviously, like when we talked to Cheryl's daughter, we asked her like whether like Roger or anyone around him owned a car like that back then. And she said the one thing that came to her mind was that Roger had this like dark sea green like Chevy Camaro. But like a Chevy Camaro is a two-door sports car. He also had that like pickup truck or like a trailblazer or whatever. A Caprice is a larger four-door sedan. It doesn't look like either of those. So I don't know if it was a car completely unrelated to him, something he might have had access to. That car is a big mystery. Now, Roger was released from prison on January 15th, 2010. Four days later, he registered as

38:35a sex offender, but he almost immediately violated his registration requirements when he moved in with his new wife, Megan, and their baby without telling anyone. Megan, the former high school student, Megan. That's the Megan. Obviously not in high school anymore by that point. But failure to do that got him five years of probation that began in 2012. When he was back in court for failing to update his address as a registered sex offender, the judge said something during the sentencing that really stuck with me. He said, quote, everything that I know about you, Mr. Huber, is you're a good father. Although, you know, having a criminal past is never a good role model example. But let's again, those those years hopefully are behind you. Sounds like you're a good father. I'm not going to remove you from from good father. I'm not going to remove you from your family. I'm not going to place you in jail. End quote. I'm going to go out on a limb here and just say that I think it's more than just not being a good role model here. So I do just have to say the judge, the first judge who called him a predator was like, I don't think you have the ability to even stop. That was a woman. The judge who called him. Wait, let me guess.

39:51This one's a man. Was a man. The one who calls him a good father. So like, make your own call about that. Roger got discharged from all supervision on February 25th, 2015. But that's not five years. I, it's, you're right. Math is, is mathing. Yeah. He just got done early. And just in time, because in August of 2015, he ended up getting arrested for driving under the influence of drugs, which would have been a probation violation. If he had still been on it. Right. But he wasn't. And so he is still out. And this is why I titled this episode As a Warning. Because while one judge was just hoping Roger's past was behind him, he was a convicted predator. And I think it takes more than hope and a prayer to protect kids. And Roger seems to be around plenty of kids still. He is still married to Megan. They now have three kids. And because of her Facebook, we have a pretty good idea of the image that they put out to the world. Posted on Megan's page are photos of Roger at backyard pool parties at Disney World with his family. It's the curated image of a family man,

41:07and it's an image that Roger seems like he wants to protect. Our reporter Malika Dhaliwal found a state police report from October 2025 where Roger called 911 to report suspicious activity because people were talking about him in a public Facebook group, specifically about him being a registered sex offender and the crimes that he was convicted of. So they were speaking the truth. Yes. He told police that he thought the comments were threatening, but the responding officer looked at the comments and was like, yeah, no. And Roger had to admit that nobody threatened him directly. No one had done anything to him or to his property. The officer basically told him like, listen, Facebook is a public forum. And it's like if your community wants to talk about who's living in their community, like people have the freedom of speech just like they would in any other public place. if this next thing was Roger or not. But when Malika posted on a local Lockport Facebook group asking if anyone who knew Cheryl wanted just to talk to us, within 24 hours, that post was reported multiple times and got removed. But it's hard to hide from your past forever. And we heard something really interesting. So in our reporting, we were trying to get in touch

42:23with the original prosecutor on Roger's like sexual abuse case. But interestingly, her office said that she couldn't speak because of a pending matter related to the criminal case against Roger. What criminal case? Exactly my question. We have been trying to find out, but knowing that that case stuff was being pulled in 2025, knowing we've got a judge saying there is a pending criminal case in 2026, I think something seems to be brewing in Niagara County. Cheryl Rucci is still missing. Her daughter now has children of her own, three boys that Cheryl never got to meet. And her daughter told us that growing up without her mom has been confusing and painful, especially because she believes that she knows who is responsible and has had to watch that person go on living their life. And Cheryl's mom has spent 20 years waiting for answers and trying to keep Cheryl's memory alive but at times it can feel like her legacy is always going to be tied to Roger and Cheryl's cousin acknowledges that Cheryl may have been involved in some bad things I mean she is far from a perfect victim but she says that her daughter should never have had to grow up without

43:41her mother and maybe that's the truth about Cheryl. She was a complicated person living a very complicated life inside a world that Roger Huber controlled. I'll say it again. She was an imperfect victim who became an imperfect witness. She was a woman who decided to testify against the most powerful person in her life, knowing what it might cost her. And then she disappeared before she could have her day in court. She deserves to be found. Her family deserves answers. So if anyone out there knows anything about the disappearance of Cheryl Rucci, I mean, anything at all, please contact the Niagara County Sheriff's Office at 716-438-3393. You can also submit a tip anonymously to their website. Investigator Ed Finley, he's the current lead on the case, told us that even information that seems small, like a rumor that's been passed around, even if you think they know it, they might not. Like, it can matter if it gives investigators something to follow.

45:04You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, CrimeJunkiePodcast.com. And you can follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. I think Chuck would approve.