Rodriguez Trial Begins Monday
By: Lauren Murphy
Updated: March 25, 2008
Rosendo Rodriguez turns twenty-eight next week, but he'll spend his birthday fighting for his life in a Randall County courtroom.
He could face the death penalty if convicted.
Rodriguez is the son of a lawyer.
He grew up in Wichita Falls and graduated from high school there in 1998.
That same year, he moved to Lubbock, enrolled at Texas Tech, and pledged Omega Delta Phi.
The other members later voted to remove him.
Rodriguez never graduated from Tech.
Instead, he joined the Marine reserves, but after he was connected with Baldwin's murder.
She was found September 13, 2005 in a suitcase at a city landfill.
The autopsy revealed she was five weeks pregnant, and she may have been alive when she was stuffed in the bag.
Police tracked the barcode inside the suitcase to a local Walmart, and to a debit card belonging to Rodriguez.
Surveillance video showed him buying that suitcase and a pair of latex gloves.
On September 15, 2005, police arrested Rodriguez at his father's house in San Antonio.
A month later, a grand jury indicted him for capital murder.
Then, the pieces began to fit together in the disappearance of a local teenager, missing since May 4, 2004.
Joanna Rogers was a junior at Lubbock High School.
She was active in theater, debate, and dance.
She also volunteered at the South Plains Wildlife Rehabilitation Center.
On May 3, 2004 Joanna returned from work around midnight.
After Rodriguez's arrest in the Baldwin case, investigators linked him to Joanna through information found on their computers.
In June, a reported confession tape led investigators back to the landfill, and on October 24, 2006, they found Joanna in a suitcase.
Rodriguez was expected to plead guilty, as part of a deal to avoid the death penalty.
Instead, he stood in front of a judge and said he did not understand the agreement.
After two attempts to keep the trial in Lubbock, the judge decided to move it to Randall county, where the jurors are not familiar with the case.
KLBK's Lauren Murphy will be covering the entire trial via satellite from Randall County.
