Rogers’ Defense Targets Other Area Felons

The motel where Tina Marie Cribbs died from two deep stab wounds was in a dangerous area filled with felons, but police never tried to determine if she was killed by anyone other than suspected serial killer Glen Rogers.

That’s what Rogers’ lawyers hope to prove in their defense presentation, which began Monday after prosecutors rested their case in his trial on charges of murdering Cribbs.

They also focused on the time of Cribbs’ death to show she might have been alive when Rogers left town.

Rogers is accused of killing four women in a cross-country crime binge that allegedly began with the slaying of a Santa Monica woman outside a Van Nuys bar.

Defense lawyer Nick Sinardi said registration logs from the Tampa 8 motel--where Cribbs’ body was found in the bathtub of a room rented to Rogers--and the motel next door, show other convicted felons had rented rooms and might have had an opportunity to kill Cribbs.

“We do not deny that Mr. Rogers was with Tina Cribbs. Our point is as Mr. Rogers left . . . that she was alive. He found out she was dead sometime thereafter,” Sinardi told Circuit Judge Diana Allen outside the presence of the jury. Sinardi had the registration logs admitted as evidence when the motels’ managers testified.

Tampa Police Officer Thomas Thayer later said police were called to the Tampa 8 motel 48 times between June 1995 and December 1995. Cribbs’ body was found Nov. 7, 1995.

Sinardi told Judge Allen he plans to present the conviction records of some guests staying at the motel at the same time as Rogers.

Rogers, 34, is on trial for first-degree murder in Cribbs’ death. A maid found her body in the motel bathtub, after ignoring a handwritten “do not disturb” sign on the door of room 119.

A forensic pathologist testified Monday for the defense that Cribbs’ corpse showed she probably had been dead 25 to 30 hours by the time her body was found Tuesday afternoon. Earlier witnesses have said they saw Rogers leaving the motel early Monday morning.

He was captured driving Cribbs’ car after a nationwide manhunt that ended in a high-speed chase in Kentucky. He could face the death penalty if convicted.

He also is charged in the deaths of:

* Sandra Gallagher, 34, a barmaid found raped and strangled in her burning pickup in Van Nuys on Sept. 29, 1995.

* Linda Price, 34, whose stabbed body was found in the bathtub of her Jackson, Miss., apartment Nov. 3. Police said she and Rogers had lived together since meeting at a state fair weeks earlier.

* Andy Jiles Sutton, 37, whose stabbed body was found in Bossier City, La., on Nov. 9.

Rogers is also suspected in the 1993 slaying of his 71-year-old roommate, whose decomposed body was found wrapped in a sheet in an abandoned Kentucky cabin.