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Mark Anthony Rogowski, better known as Gator The Skater was an American Professional Skateboarder who was a huge, successful, and popular Skateboarder during the late 1980's and 1990's. He was living the greatest dreams he could ever imagine. However, what no one could've predicted was that a hugely loved Skateboarder would become a hideous monster in his later years...

Gator was born on August 10th 1966 in Brooklyn, New York but he moved to Escondido California with his Mother and Brother when his parents divorced. Gator had a fun childhood, but he was often considered to be a "misfit" among his friends because his family didn't own a lot of money. However, none of his differences or financial problems could stop him from being a fantastic Skateboarder.

Gator started Skateboarding at the age of 7 when The Escondido Skate Park opened for the first time. Skateboarding was his favorite thing to do and he could never get enough of it. Things got even better for him 5 years later when he was 12 years old because he was being picked up by local Skateboarding teams in amateur tournaments.

But his life got even better 2 years later when he was 14. He became a Professional Skateboarder and was racking up a lot of endorsement deals, fame, and wealth. He started making 4 to  8 thousand dollars a month for clothing and Skateboard gear endorsements and even instructional Skateboarding videos with the company, Goal Wing. Gator got even luckier when he was 21 years old in 1987 when he signed a deal with the brand Visions, so they could use Gator's name on their merchandise such as Skateboards, clothing, barrets, hit packs, and stickers. Each of their merchandise sold 7,000 a month, which earned Gator $14,000 a month.

Gator was becoming more popular and successful than he could have ever imagined. He became a worldwide phenomenon. Whenever he and his friends went on tours for Skating Shows all around the world, fans and groupies would line up super excited to meet them. Gator had women and other fans throwing themselves at him screaming with joy. It didn't seem like Gator's life could get any better, but it did.

That same year in Scottsville, Arizona during a tour he was on, Gator met two young blonde women there. 17 year old Brandi McClain, and 17 year old Jessica Bergsten. Gator and Brandi spent the whole weekend partying together, and they fell madly in love and started dating each other. Gator wrote love letters every single day to Brandi telling her how much he loved her and always paid to have her fly from San Diego to visit him in Escondido.

Gator eventually asked Brandi to move in with him on his ranch. But after a short while of living with each other there, they felt isolated on Gator's ranch, so he sold it and moved to Carlsbad by the beach. They spent every day together and they even appeared in Tom Petty's music video of his song, "Free Fallin'".

Everything seemed to be just perfect for Gator. He was living the happiest and most successful life he ever could have wanted everywhere in the world. Unfortunately, what seemed like a perfect dream come true for Gator was about to take a huge unexpected turn for the worst...

Despite how wonderful Gator was living, he was known to have a huge rage problem and a drinking problem. He drank heavily to control his rage, but it unfortunately only made his short temper even worse. But this would only be the beginning of the endless downward spiral he would go through for the rest of his life...

During a tour to Australia in 1989, Gator had spent the entire day making demos and he became very frustrated and burnt out from working so much. A child who was a huge fan of Gator approached him that day and asked him for his autograph, but Gator wasn't in the right mood for an autograph, so he tried to shoo the child away, but he kept asking for his autograph. Gator then lost his temper and punched the child in front of many people who were around him. His sales immediately started dropping in Australia when it was revealed how violent and rude he was.

Things only became more difficult for Gator when Vertical Skateboarding started to become less popular at the end of the 1980's. By the 1990's, a new popular Skateboarding generation was getting started called Street Skating. Gator tried to participate in the newer trending Street Staking, but he was having trouble adapting to the trend because he was far more experienced with Vertical Skating. Unfortunately, his incredible fame and wealth as a Vertical Skater started to gradually decrease all around the world.

In 1990, Gator and The Vision Skateboarding Team participated in a World Cup Skateboarding Competition in Germany. However, Gator was severely drunk at the time and left the competition as a result and his team couldn't find him. Later that day however, Gator's friend and his team's manager, John Hogan witnessed him climbing up a construction crane onto a two story Hotel and doing a swan dive by jumping off the building and crashing onto a fence. Gator miraculously survived the fall and walked into Hogan's hotel room bleeding so much, it sounded like someone pouring soda.

Absolutely horrified, Hogan and the rest of the team rushed Gator to a nearby hospital where he was in so much pain and so drunk, he acted like a mentally insane person when he was given Phencyclidine. The next day, Gator was completely unaware as to how he got all of his stitches and why he was even at the hospital in the first place, which his friends explained everything to him.

After the incidents in Australia and Germany, Gator started to realize how troubled he was acting and resorted to Religion to help himself out with his troubling career. "The accident in Germany seemed to coincide with local Carlsbad Christian Surfers preaching Jesus to me on the boardwalk. I was receptive because I felt like my life was missing direction at the time. It wasn't until I accepted Christ or converted that I really began to get an honest look at how screwed up I was inside, how lonely I was, dissatisfied with my life, and my career." He said in a 1990 interview. Even though Gator's friends thought this was just a new fad and interest for him, Gator really wanted to find direction in his life and to help himself after all of the trouble he caused.

Gator tried to get Brandi to convert to Religion with him, but Brandi wanted more of her and Gator's party life and wasn't interested in his new dedication to Religion. When Gator realized Brandi wasn't interested in the new ways he wanted her to live with him, the couple broke up and Brandi moved out of his house as Gator said to her : "Maybe you should find someone your own age.". Brandi found a new boyfriend not long after she broke up with Gator and moved out of his house. However, instead of moving on with his life after he broke up with Brandi, Gator started taking his lifestyle to the extreme when she found her new Boyfriend.

Gator became very jealous of Brandi and her new boyfriend and began stocking them. One day, Gator broke into Brandi's house where she and her Mother lived and took back everything he ever bought for her. Even her very own car. He even called Brandi's boyfriend's house when he was there too. After taking back everything he bought for her, he said one last thing to Brandi before he left her house. He threatened to take her somewhere, commit every sex act imaginable, kill her, and dump her body in the desert.

At this point, Brandi was scared for her life. She knew Gator was no longer the fun loving Skateboarder she fell in love with, but a deranged sicko. She only told her parents about Gator's threats and she and her family moved away from Escondido.

Unfortunately, Brandi's friend, Jessica Bergsten had no idea about Gator's dangerous behavior and she moved to San Diego the same time Brandi and her family moved away from Escondido. She had Gator's number and she wanted to hang out with him and explore the city, so she called Gator and asked him to hang out and explore the city of Escondido, which Gator agreed to. Sadly, this would be a fatal mistake that Jessica nor anyone else was completely unaware of, and it would be the last and worst mistake Gator would ever make that would put his career to an end once and for all.

On this day, 31 years ago, on March 20th 1991, a day that would scar Brandi and anyone else who knew Jessica and Gator for life, Jessica and Gator explored around the city and had lunch together. Then they bought some Movie VHS's and bottles of wine before they went to Gator's house and got drunk.

It seemed like a normal get together that day, until when Jessica was looking at a picture of Gator in his living room, the get together turned into a horror show. Out of nowhere, Gator grabbed a steering wheel club and hit Jessica in the head three times with it, knocking her unconscious and causing her to fall and bleed on the floor. So much blood was flowing out of Jessica that she bled on Gator's carpet and even on his floor underneath the carpet. Gator then handcuffed the semi conscious 21 year old before dragging her into his room and raping her for 3 hours committing every sexual act he knew...

During the 3 hour long torture session, Jessica begged and screamed for Gator to stop despite how unconscious she was, and he got worried that her cries for help would be heard by someone, so he placed a Surfboard bag over her. Jessica couldn't breathe under the bag and when she told Gator she couldn't breathe to get him to take it off, Gator strangled her to death. After raping and strangling the woman, Gator drove to The Shell Canyon Dessert where he dumped her body and drove back home.

When Gator arrived back at his house, he rented a steam cleaner to remove Jessica's blood from his carpet, floor, and mattress to try and hide the hideous murder. He even flipped over his mattress to conceal himself more.

After the tragic killing, it didn't take long for everyone to realize that Jessica was missing. Gator was questioned about her disappearance a few weeks after he killed her and her family flew to San Diego to look for her and put up posters in every Skate Park and Surf Park in the city. Everyone tried everything they could to find Jessica, but there was no trace of her. However, there was one man that actually found Jessica. And that man was Gator.

Gator may have gotten away with murder if his guilt didn't take complete control himself. Gator confessed everything about the rape and murder to his friend, Augie Constantino who was a well known Christian Skater in San Diego. Horrified upon Gator telling him this, Constantino ended him and Gator's friendship and convinced Gator to turn himself into the police. Constantino drove Gator to the police department where Gator also confessed everything about the rape and murder.

The police were stunned that a popular celebrity like Gator was confessing to a rape and murder they never even knew about. A body was found in The Shell Canyon Desert, but it couldn't be identified because it was badly decomposed from the extremely hot and rough elements. Nobody knew who the body was until Gator led the police to the desert where he dumped Jessica's body. He explained everything he did to her that day.

The reason Gator committed the heinous acts towards Jessica was because he wanted to get a misplaced sense of revenge on Brandi since Jessica was Brandi's best friend and as Gator put it : "Jessica was the mold Brandi was made out of.".

After Gator gave himself away and explained to everyone what he did, and when everyone knew Jessica was gone and she could never come back, he was quickly arrested and taken to court.

Gator's court sentencing happened nearly a year after he raped and killed Jessica on March 6th 1992. He pled guilty to First Degree Murder and wrote a 4 page statement apologizing to Jessica's family saying he only had seen a glimpse of their pain and no family deserves to have a loved one taken from them. He also acknowledged that at first, he was trying to put the responsibility on God and Jessica herself. At the end of his statement, Gator said : "God has changed me. And it was no typical jailhouse conversion. I surely hope they can accept my apology for my carelessness.". Jessica's family and everyone else however, refused to forgive Gator. They were all filled with rage towards him. Gator was sentenced to 31 years in prison. He was denied parole twice in 2011 and in 2018. However, on June 15th 2022, after serving 30 years in prison, Gator The Skater was granted parole as he was said to be "A low risk to the public." And he is currently awaiting his release back to the free world. People in California and people all over the world are not happy with the fact that Gator was granted parole, but unfortunately, there is nothing that can be done to prevent him from coming back to the free world.

A 2002 documentary was made about Gator's life called Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator by Palm Pictures. The film was written, directed, and produced by Helen Stickler, and features interviews with other professional skateboarders such as Tony Hawk, Kevin Staab, Lance Mountain, Ken Park, Steve Caballero, Jason Jessee, Craig Johnson, Stacy Peralta, and Gator himself. Because California doesn't allow video interviews with prison inmates, Gator was interviewed over the recorded prison phone for the documentary and gave details on his background, his downfall, and remorse for murdering Jessica Bergsten. This story was also featured on an episode of Shattered on the Investigation Discovery channel and it features interviews with the police, investigators, Brandi McClain, and Gator's old friend, Auggie Costantino.

The Story Of Gator The Skater is a truly heartbreaking story that goes to show that someone's life can change drastically at the most unexpected times, and how horrific the outcomes can be for people.

To this day, 31 years later, The Story Of Gator The Skater still continues to haunt the lives of many and it's a tragic story that will always be remembered by everyone...

The end...