Investigation Discovery is examing the case of TV personality Scott Rogers, who police died in a murder/suicide pact with his lover, Mathew Hodgkinson, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 2014.
Scott Rogers had been a beloved and charismatic host of a TV show that dedicated lots of airtime to charitable events; however, on his death, it emerged that he harbored dark secrets from his past.
On August 27, 2014, 52-year-old Rogers was found lying dead on his bedroom floor. In the room with him was the corpse of 36-year-old Mathew Hodgkinson. The sheriff’s deputies concluded that Hodgkinson had murdered Rogers before turning the gun on himself.
In the early 1990s, Rogers had been running a school for performing arts in England when allegations emerged that he had been sexually abusing his pupils. A 1993 court case acquitted him of wrongdoing, but when parents began pulling their children from the school, Rogers decided to leave for the USA.
After spending time in Texas, he eventually settled in Baton Rouge, where he established the highly successful weekend TV show, Around Town.
He was joined by two young men Mathew Hodgkinson, and another referred to by the police as Stewart, both of whom he’d met at his school in England. Stewart later told investigators that Rogers had begun a sexual relationship with them both when they were teens.
In 2013, Hodgkinson married Rogers’s daughter Kimberly Rogers; however, the police believe this was a sham marriage, meant only to allow Hodgkinson to stay in the country with Rogers.
Watch the Latest on our YouTube ChannelIt seems that Rogers, Hodgkinson, and Stewart all lived together in a house with Rogers’s adopted 10-year-old son and a 2-year-old male foster child.
US authorities began investigating Scott Rogers
Questions had begun to emerge about Rogers’s past when the authorities started investigating him and Hodgkinson for document fraud. During this investigation, Rogers’s previous activities in England, once again, came under the spotlight.
The authorities removed the two children from Rogers’s home and placed them in foster care.
On the day of the shooting, Stewart and Kimberly were due to take the stand in court when news of the deaths came through, thereby suspending the proceedings.
The police believe that Rogers and Hodgkinson decided to avoid the courts and agreed to a suicide pact. A suicide note was discovered, supposedly written by Hodgkinson, it read: “They broke our happy, loving home. They do not get to take Scott too.”
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Lying King: The Scott Rodgers Story airs at 9/8c on Investigation Discovery.