ST. LOUIS — A St. Louis man was sentenced Thursday to a decade in prison after admitting his role in a deadly robbery in 2017.
Darnell Rogers, 29, pleaded guilty in the shooting deaths of Megan Nieder and Joseph Finger in the 200 block of Bellerive Boulevard, in the Carondelet neighborhood of south St. Louis.
Prosecutors said Nieder, 27, and Finger, 40, were found shot on Oct. 24, 2017.
Witnesses told authorities that Finger had several thousand dollars in cash on him, but police found no money at the shooting scene.
Police found 9mm and .22-caliber shell casings at the crime scene, according to court documents. Cellphone records showed Rogers had called Finger the night before.
Rogers was also charged with a robbery in St. Louis County a few days after Nieder and Finger’s deaths. While serving a prison sentence for that robbery, Rogers called relatives to ask them to get rid of a black purse that was in the basement of his parents’ home, charges said.
Prosecutors said after learning of the calls, police got a search warrant, seized the purse and matched it with the strap found at the shooting scene. The purse also had Finger’s DNA on it. On Thursday, Rogers received a 10-year prison term as part of a plea deal with prosecutors. He pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder, two counts of first-degree robbery and four counts of armed criminal action.
Rogers is currently in prison as part of a 10-year sentence in the St. Louis County case. This new 10-year sentence will run concurrently, or at the same time, with that sentence.
In court Thursday, the victims’ relatives said their deaths devastated their families and that they still have unanswered questions about what led to the shootings.
Before sentencing Rogers, Judge John T. Bird said in court that he didn’t like the negotiated plea agreement but would accept it because the lawyers better understood the case’s strengths and weaknesses. Bird told Rogers he destroyed two families and wanted Rogers to understand the consequences of his actions.
“This is just a tragedy and you caused it,” Bird said. “Your greed caused it.”
