The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Joe Rogers’ wife: False testimony swayed jury
Fran Rogers asserts two key witnesses lied under oath.
The wife of Waffle House chairman Joe Rogers, whose ex-housekeeper was acquitted Wednesday on unlawful surveillance charges, is accusing two key defense witnesses of lying under oath.
Mye Brindle and the two attorneys she hired to help her bring a civil lawsuit against Rogers were found not guilty after two days of jury deliberation. Brindle was accused of making a clandestine recording of a sexual encounter with Rogers in his bedroom in 2012. Her two lawyers, David Cohen and John Butters, were charged with the same crime for advising her to do it.
In her first public remarks since the acquittal, Fran Rogers, the chairman’s wife, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that both Brindle and another former housekeeper, Dawn Tyler, lied about their interactions with her husband. She labeled their testimonies “complete fabrications” and said similarities between the two womens’ stories are particularly suspicious. Both accuse Joe Rogers of pressuring them into sexual acts during massages and of assaulting them while on an outof-town trip, and even use similar language to describe the encounters, she said.
Dawn Tyler testified last Friday that she and her husband at the
time, Jeff White, accompanied Joe Rogers on a business trip to his ranch in Colorado in January 1996. Tyler was invited to come as Rogers’ personal massage therapist, she said, and during one of these massages, an intoxicated Rogers touched her inappropriately. Rogers testified the encounter never happened.
Tyler said when she confided in her husband about the alleged encounter, telling him she no longer wanted to work for Rogers, he asked her to continue working for at least one more year because he was under contract. White also worked for Rogers. She said the encounter ultimately ruined her marriage, although White, her ex-husband, testified that the couple divorced because of his drinking, not because of Rogers’ behavior.
“He had let me know I was not the valued employee I had thought,” Tyler testified.
However, Fran Rogers provided the AJC with copies of payroll records that appear to show Tyler was no longer employed as the Rogers’ housekeeper in 1996, when she said the assault took place. The records indicate Tyler was removed from the payroll in 1994. Guest book records from Bear Wallow Ranch, the Colorado property the couple was visiting, also list only Tyler and White as guests during that 1996 stay. Rogers isn’t listed as visiting during that time.
“All of her other testimony was done to try to put herself in Mye’s shoes to make it look like there was a pattern – which there was not,” Fran Rogers said.
The latter half of the trial resembled a sexual harassment lawsuit — which Brindle has indeed brought against Rogers in Cobb County — more than an unlawful surveillance trial, with much of the testimony centering on whether Brindle’s encounters with Rogers were consensual and on Rogers’ character, rather than on the recording itself. Prosecutors, Fran Rogers said, wouldn’t use that strategy, and she thinks the jury was distracted by it.
“The DA refused to let up, bring character witnesses or try to play the defense game – trying to stay focused on the crime itself. In the end, unfortunately, particularly with Mye’s lies and Dawn’s lies, the jury let all of that influence them,” she said.
The Rogers’ legal journey isn’t over, though. Joe Rogers and Brindle have each filed lawsuits against one another in Cobb County, but that litigation was placed on hold during the criminal trial. Fran Rogers said she and her husband plan to depose Tyler.
Reid Thompson, the defense attorney who represented Brindle, denied the accusations, saying the jury indicated with its verdict that it believed Joe Rogers was the one being dishonest, not Brindle.
“I would encourage everyone to step back and take a breath and move forward with the civil suit without any name-calling,” Thompson said.
Thompson said Rogers could technically choose to press charges for perjury if he wanted to, but that it’s unlikely.
“I’ve never heard of that happening,” he said. “It would be bizarre.”