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Timmy Rogers was convicted of murder and sentenced to 35 years after an October 2010 trial in Horry County, South Carolina, in the strangulation death of Frederik (Fred) Engel, 53, whose wife, Sherry Engel, testified for the State.

The Engels lived in the Berkshire Forest subdivision in the Carolina Forest area of Horry County. Sherry Engel testified that she began an affair with Rogers in May 2007 after meeting him while visiting Kentucky and traveled there about monthly to see him. She said he often talked about "getting rid" of her husband. A motel employee testified that Rogers stayed about ten miles from the Engels' home in April 2008, in a room Sherry Engel paid for in cash, and drove a red Chevrolet S-10 pickup.

Sherry Engel testified that on the morning of April 21, 2008, Rogers told her that day would be the day her husband died, and she told him to go ahead if he was going to do it. Under the plan she described, Rogers would hide near the subdivision's mailboxes, and she would call when her husband went to check the mail. She said Rogers phoned at 11:00 p.m. to say he was in position. She asked her husband to check the mail and called Rogers to say he was leaving. Rogers later called back and said "It's done." Around midnight, she said, he told her he was washing blood off himself at his motel. She told a neighbor she could not find her husband, then saw blood and his glasses on the ground at the mailboxes. Police found Fred Engel's body in the woods about 30 feet from the mailboxes early on April 22, 2008, with a shoestring around his neck. A pathologist determined he was strangled and also had a fresh head laceration and a defensive wound on a finger. Sherry Engel testified that the plan she knew of involved a gun, not strangulation.

A subdivision resident testified that on the evening of April 21 she saw a red Chevrolet S-10 pickup back into a space across from the mailboxes with its headlights off. A cell phone records expert testified to at least 14 calls and texts between Sherry Engel and Rogers that day. Rogers' phone used towers covering the subdivision at 9:41 to 9:44 p.m., 10:35 p.m. and 11:05 p.m., but the records showed only the general area, not the user or exact location. Sherry Engel testified that Rogers later said he washed his truck's steering wheel with bleach and painted the truck gray. A grand jury indicted Rogers for murder about three months after the killing.

During his police interview, detectives pressed Rogers about his relationship with the married Sherry Engel. He called her a good friend he cared about, acknowledged occasional hugging and kissing, and said she gave him the wedding ring he was wearing. In her police interview, Sherry Engel recounted what she said Rogers told her afterward: he had blood on his hands, wore camouflage coveralls and boots, bleached his steering wheel, and got rid of the keys, a watch, the boots and the coveralls.

On September 4, 2013, the South Carolina Court of Appeals affirmed Rogers' conviction in State v. Rogers, 405 S.C. 554, 748 S.E.2d 265. The court found the State's proof entirely circumstantial but, taken together, sufficient to go to the jury.

Sherry Engel, originally charged with murder and with accessory before and after the fact of murder, pleaded guilty to accessory before the fact of voluntary manslaughter under an agreement with the Horry County solicitor's office. On December 8, 2010, Circuit Judge Larry Hyman sentenced her to 30 years, with at least 85 percent to be served before parole eligibility. At the hearing, she said Rogers had threatened to kill members of her family and had abused her physically and sexually. The judge told her he did not accept that she acted under duress.

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Part 2 of 3 of the recording described above.

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Part 3 of 3 of the recording described above.