Killer Sentenced to Die in Florida

Suspected serial killer Glen Rogers, who is charged with strangling a Van Nuys woman at the start of a cross-country murder rampage, was sentenced Friday to die in Florida’s notoriously quirky electric chair for the murder of a woman near Tampa.

Rogers, 34, showed little emotion as he stood in a Tampa courtroom and heard Judge Diana Allen follow a jury’s recommendation that he should be executed for the gruesome murder of Tina Marie Cribbs.

Cribbs, 34, a hotel maid who met Rogers in a honky-tonk bar, was stabbed to death in what Allen called an “especially heinous, atrocious and cruel” manner.

“All this took place in a motel bathroom with little, if any, chance of escape,” Allen said. “Her lifeblood was flowing down the bathtub drain.”

Cribbs is one of four red-haired women Rogers is charged with killing in a murderous rage that began soon after the end of a stormy relationship with a woman with whom he lived, first in Hollywood and then in Van Nuys.

It was in Van Nuys, on Sept. 29, 1995, that he allegedly committed his first killing. Authorities said Sandra Gallagher, a Santa Monica mother of three, ran into Rogers in McRed’s Cocktail Lounge as she celebrated winning money in the lottery. She left with him, witnesses said, and her body was later found in her burning truck not far away. Gallagher, 33, had been strangled.

Since Rogers’ televised capture in Kentucky, he has become something of a celebrity among groupies of infamous killers. His autograph, personal letters and even locks of his long reddish-blond hair have been offered for sale through an underground network of collectors of macabre memorabilia.

As he was taken from the courthouse, handcuffed and wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, Rogers told reporters: “I’m not guilty. I will be back. I’m not worried about it at all.”

Asked if he were afraid to die, Rogers said, “Not at all. I don’t think I’m going to, neither.”

But Rogers’ brother, Claude--a Palm Springs real estate broker who attended the trial two months ago and flew in for the sentencing--suggested that Glen was in denial about his straits.

“If you watch my brother, he’s been sitting watching a movie,” Claude Rogers told Associated Press. “I don’t think reality has set in.”

Whether Rogers will ever face trial in California, or face death in Florida’s electric chair, is in doubt. Although Gov. Pete Wilson’s office has been working on a deal to bring Rogers west to stand trial in the Sept. 29, 1995, murder of Gallagher, Florida officials may not let him go.

And after a botched electrocution in March in Florida’s electric chair, nicknamed Old Sparky, during which flames shot from the head of killer Pedro Medina, all executions have been suspended pending a hearing on the constitutionality of the electric chair.

Attorneys for the next in line to be killed are arguing that using the chair represents cruel and unusual punishment.

In addition to Gallagher, Rogers is charged with killing two other women, one in Mississippi and another in Louisiana. He is also a suspect in the 1993 death of a 71-year-old man whose body was found in an abandoned Kentucky cabin.