WARNING: Roger Hueber

18:16Ashley Flowers:I mean it feels like he's using Megan like he used Cheryl.

18:19Brit Prawat: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 Rogers' bidding, no matter how she sees Emily. These incidents end up getting reported to authorities, and prosecutors use this to get Rogers' bail revoked. And while he's sitting in prison, the case that his defense team was building really 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.

19:02Brit Prawat: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.

19:46And 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.

19:55Brit Prawat:I think you prey on young girls. I think you have an inability almost to avoid that. And then the judge gives him the maximum 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. 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.

20:42And 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.

21:05Ashley Flowers:I mean, I believe this zero percent. You are a man in your 40s. You don't need to check a birthday when you see a 13-year-old girl. Right. They're like they're in middle school. Come on. And listen, one parole commissioner calls him out on this like absolute bullshit. She 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.

21:40And 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.

21:48Brit Prawat: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.

22:26Brit Prawat: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 or credit cards or a driver's license? And like, sure, like she could have taken the bus or something, but how is she going to 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.

22:59And 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, 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.

23:40on 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 in taking out the trash at the time, which makes sense with her shoes being inside the apartment.

23:59Brit Prawat: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.

24:36Like with the canine scent ending there.

24:39Ashley Flowers:Yeah, and if she gets in the car, then she probably went off with someone she knows.

24:44Brit Prawat: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 for 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.

25:23Roger ended up dropping her and her brother off at their grandma's, like Roger's mom's house.

25:29Brit Prawat: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 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.

26:03Ashley Flowers: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 they did okay but if you're gonna 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 tractor 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.

26:53But 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.

27:31In 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.

27:41Brit Prawat:Investigators even searched Roger's old home once it 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.

28:25Now, 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.

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29:45On the night Cheryl disappeared, around 10, maybe 10.15 at night, Amy was driving to work,

29:52Brit Prawat: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. So 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.

30:30So while Amy is trying to like make sense of this, something catches her eye on the side of the road.

30:36Brit Prawat: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.

31:18Brit Prawat:because Amy realized that 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.

32:01Brit Prawat: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 as 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.

32:45And 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.

32:58Brit Prawat: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.

33:17Ashley Flowers:What does that even mean?

33:20Brit Prawat:That doesn't even feel to me like, oh, like she ran away. This feels like she deserves whatever's coming to her.

33:26Ashley Flowers: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.

33:44Brit Prawat: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. But 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.

34:22We 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 him, 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.

35:00So if these tapes are real, we don't know where they are now, whether they were logged somewhere else, returned, lost, destroyed, or never 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 Amy 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.

35:37Brit Prawat: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 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.

36:16Brit Prawat: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. That's kind of hard to do as one individual with no law enforcement connections.

36:29Ashley Flowers:Okay, girl, what are we waiting for?

36:30Brit Prawat: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.

37:06And 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, an advocacy organization that helped push for the search, which finally happened in November of 2024.

37:49and 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.

38:07Ashley Flowers:Even if nothing is there now though, that doesn't mean there was like never anything there.

38:13Brit Prawat:This is exactly my point about the lost time. Like it is, it's terrible. Like, I don't know what has been lost that we can't get back.

38:21Ashley Flowers: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 plate itself, who it came back to, what other kind of vehicle it could have been registered to.

39:04But 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.

39:42And 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.

39:59Brit Prawat: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 15, 2010. Four days later, he registered as a 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.

40:50Brit Prawat: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 your family. I'm not going to place you in jail. End quote.

41:12Ashley Flowers: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 like have the ability to even stop. That was a woman. The judge who called him. Wait, let me guess. This 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.

41:47Brit Prawat:But that's not five years. It's your right. Math is mathing. 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.

42:31Brit Prawat: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, and 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.

43:13So they were speaking the truth. Yes. He told police that he thought the comments were threatening, but the responding officer like looked at the comments and was like, yeah, no. And Roger had to admit that like 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. And I can't say 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.

43:56But 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 with 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?

44:21Brit Prawat: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.

45:07Brit Prawat: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. She is far from a perfect victim. But she says that her daughter should never have had to grow up without her 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.

45:44Brit Prawat: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.

46:39Brit Prawat:you can find all the source material for this episode on our website

46:44Ashley Flowers:crimejunkiepodcast.com and you can follow us on instagram at crimejunkie podcast

46:48Brit Prawat:we'll be back next week with a brand new episode

46:57Thank you.

47:27Brit Prawat:Crime Junkie is an Audio Chuck production. I think Chuck would approve.