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Glen Edward Rogers

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Glen Rogers
Death Row mugshot
Born (1962-07-15) July 15, 1962 (age 62)
Hamilton, Ohio, U.S.
Other namesThe Cross Country Killer
The Casanova Killer
Height6 ft (1.83 m)
Criminal statusIncarcerated
Conviction(s)Florida
First degree murder
Armed robbery
Grand theft auto
California
First degree murder with special circumstances
Arson
Criminal penaltyDeath
Details
Victims2 convictions, 3+ more suspected, 70 claimed
Span of crimes
1993 – November 9, 1995
CountryUnited States
State(s)California
Florida
Kentucky (suspected)
Mississippi
Louisiana
Date apprehended
November 13, 1995; 28 years ago (1995-11-13)
Imprisoned atUnion Correctional Institution

Glen Edward Rogers (born July 15, 1962),[1] is an American convicted serial killer. He was also convicted of related crimes in Florida and California, such as armed robbery, grand theft auto, and arson.

Also known as "The Cross Country Killer" or "The Casanova Killer", he was convicted of first-degree murder at two separate trials in the deaths of two women (the first in Florida in 1997 and the second in California in June 1999). He is a suspect in numerous other murders throughout the United States. After a crime spree that began on September 28, 1995, with Rogers's first authoritatively established murder, he was featured on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.[2]

He was sentenced to death in both Florida and California. He has been incarcerated since 1997 at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida, where he is held on death row.

According to a 2012 cable-TV documentary, Rogers claimed that he committed the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, though O. J. Simpson was acquitted in a criminal trial.[3]

Early life

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Rogers was born and raised in Hamilton, Ohio. He was one of seven children born to Edna (née Sears) and Claude Rogers. Among his siblings is a brother Clay. Their father Claude was a hydro pulp operator at the local Champion paper company. Rogers was expelled from his junior high school before he was 16.

Sometime after his expulsion, his 14-year-old girlfriend Deborah Ann Nix got pregnant. The young couple married. They had another child together in 1981. In 1983, Nix filed for divorce, alleging physical abuse by Rogers.[4]

Murders

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Authorities in Hamilton, Ohio suspected Rogers of fatally stabbing or strangling an elderly man in that city in 1993. Later Rogers moved away from Ohio, surfacing in California.

In 1995, he was named as a suspect in the murders of four women that year: in California, Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana, respectively.

After being arrested in Kentucky on November 13, Rogers originally told police he had committed nearly 70 murders. He recanted his statement. He said he was joking and had not committed any murders.[5]

  • Mark Peters (Hamilton, Ohio) – suspected victim
On January 10, 1994, police recovered the remains of 71-year-old Mark Peters, a retired electrician and veteran, in a cabin belonging to the family of Glen Rogers in Beattyville, Kentucky. Peters had earlier taken Glen Rogers in and allowed him to share his home in Hamilton before October 1993. That month Peters was reported missing, along with his car and several valuable personal items, including antiques, guns, and a collection of coins. Rogers had disappeared.

His brother Clay reportedly led police to search the family cabin for clues. Peters's remains were found there, bound to a chair and hidden by a pile of furniture.[6][7]

  • Sandra Gallagher (Los Angeles, California)
On September 28, 1995, Sandra Gallagher, a 33-year-old mother of three, was seen to encounter Rogers at McRed's bar in Van Nuys, California. The next day, Gallagher's badly burned corpse was found in her truck parked near Rogers's Van Nuys apartment. She was found to have been strangled. Authorities allege that after murdering Gallagher, Rogers fled to the Southeast, living for a time in Mississippi, Florida, and Louisiana. In each state, he was suspected of the murder of another woman.[2]

On June 22, 1999, Rogers was convicted in California of murdering Gallagher. He was already serving time in Florida for the murder of a woman there.[2] On July 16, 1999, California sentenced him to death.[8]

  • Linda Price (Jackson, Mississippi)
According to Kathy Carroll, her sister Linda Price met Rogers at a beer tent at the Mississippi State Fair in fall 1995. Linda repeatedly said: "Ain't he good-looking?" Rogers and Price briefly shared an apartment in Jackson, Mississippi. Price was a single mother age 34 with two children, then 15 and 18.

The last time Carroll saw her sister was the night before Halloween 1995. The two planned to have Carroll's grandchildren go trick-or-treating at Price's apartment. But Price did not answer her door on Halloween, and Rogers appeared to have left. Similar to his other suspected female victims, Price was in her 30s and had red hair. She was found dead in a bathtub in her apartment.[2]

  • Tina Marie Cribbs (Tampa, Florida)
On November 5, 1995, Cribbs was seen leaving the Showtown Bar in Gibsonton, Florida with Rogers. A bartender told police that Rogers had bought drinks for Cribbs and her friends. Later he asked Cribbs for a ride. Two days later, a member of the cleaning staff at the Tampa 8 Inn discovered Cribbs's body in a bathtub (like that of Price in Mississippi). She had been stabbed in the chest and the buttocks. A clerk at the motel told authorities that Rogers had arrived at the motel a few days before the murder.

On November 5, Rogers had paid for an extra night and asked that his room not be cleaned. The clerk saw Rogers putting his belongings into a white Ford Festiva. The next day, Cribbs's wallet was discovered at a rest area in North Florida. Police found that fingerprints lifted from her wallet and the motel room matched those of Rogers. On November 13, Rogers was arrested in Kentucky while driving Cribbs's car. He claimed that Cribbs had loaned it to him and that she was alive when he left Tampa.

On July 11, 1997, Rogers was convicted in Florida and sentenced to death for the murder of Tina Marie Cribbs.[9] He was incarcerated in Union Correctional Institution on death row.

  • Andy Jiles Sutton (Bossier City, Louisiana)
Sutton was a known acquaintance of Rogers. Her slashed body was found on November 9, 1995, on a punctured waterbed in her apartment in Bossier City, Louisiana.[10]

The four women shared similarities in appearance. Each had reddish hair and was in her 30s.

Arrest, sentence, and appeals

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Rogers drove north from Louisiana and was arrested in Waco, Kentucky after a 13-mile (20 km) chase on November 13, 1995.[10] Kentucky State Police Detective Bob Stephens noticed a man driving Cribbs's stolen car. He chased him, followed by rookie Irvine, Kentucky police officer Charles Cox. Trooper Ed Robinson and other officers set up a roadblock to stop Rogers. Robinson fired a shotgun blast that hit the rear tires but it didn't stop Rogers. Robinson joined the pursuit. Sgt. Joey Barnes (who formerly served with Florida Highway Patrol) rammed his patrol car into Cribbs's stolen car and spun Rogers off the highway into a ditch. Stephens, Cox, Robinson, Barnes, and other officers surrounded Rogers and arrested him. A local TV news crew filmed Rogers's chase and arrest on the scene.

After being convicted and sentenced to death for Cribbs's murder, Rogers was scheduled to be executed on Valentine's Day 1999 in Florida. He has filed various appeals, but these have been denied. Rogers is still being held on death row at Union Correctional Institution in Raiford, Florida.

Appeal

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After his trial, he appealed his conviction to the Florida Supreme Court, claiming that the State had not presented enough evidence to support the charges. Rogers also argued that the trial court should have granted the defense's motions for a mistrial because a witness was allowed to testify about a misdemeanor for which Rogers was convicted in California. He claimed the prosecution was allowed to present an improper argument during closing arguments. His appeal was delayed until March 2001 and was ultimately denied. In April 2005, Rogers filed another appeal; it was denied in 2011. It was his last appeal.

Television and film

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A 2012 documentary entitled My Brother the Serial Killer examined Rogers's crimes and included claims that Rogers had killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in California in 1994.[11][12][13][14] According to Rogers' brother Clay, Rogers claimed that, before the murders, he had met Brown and was "going to take her down."[14] During a lengthy correspondence that began in 2009 between Rogers and criminal profiler Anthony Meoli, Rogers wrote and created paintings about his involvement with the murders. During a prison meeting between the two, Rogers claimed O.J. Simpson hired him to break into Nicole Brown Simpson's house and steal some expensive jewelry. He said that Simpson had told him, "You may have to kill the bitch". In a filmed interview, Glen's brother Clay asserts that his brother confessed his involvement.[14]

Rogers' family stated that he had informed them that he had been working for Nicole in 1994 and that he had made verbal threats about her to them. Rogers later spoke to a criminal profiler about the Goldman-Simpson murders, providing details about the crime and remarking that he had been hired by O. J. Simpson to steal a pair of earrings and potentially murder Nicole.[citation needed]

LAPD responded to the documentary as follows: “We know who killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. We have no reason to believe that Mr. Rogers was involved.” Fred Goldman, father of Ron Goldman stated: “The overwhelming evidence at the criminal trial proved that one, and only one, person murdered Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. That person is O.J. Simpson and not Glen Rogers.”[15]

Rogers was the subject of an episode of The FBI Files, titled "Deadly Stranger" (Season 3, Episode 12). He was also the subject of an episode of Southern Fried Homicide, titled "Smooth Talking Devil" (Season 3, Episode 2) on Investigation Discovery.[citation needed]

The Oxygen channel's series It Takes a Killer episode, The Casanova Killer", (run time: 22 minutes, air date: September 2, 2016) focuses on four of the murders linked to Rogers and the manhunt leading to his capture.[16]

The film The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson (2019) purports to tell the story as asserted by Rogers and his family about his involvement with Nicole Brown Simpson. Rogers is portrayed by Nick Stahl, and Mena Suvari portrays Nicole Brown Simpson.[17]

See also

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Bibliography

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  • Combs, Stephen M; Eckberg, J. Road Dog. Federal Point Pub Inc, 2002 ISBN 0-966-82591-8
  • Linedecker, Clifford L. Smooth Operator: The True Story of Seductive Serial Killer Glen Rogers. St. Martin's True Crime Classics, 1997 ISBN 0-312-96400-5
  • Spizer, J. The Cross Country Killer. Top Publications, Ltd., 2001 ISBN 1-929-97611-9

References

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  1. ^ "Inmate Population Information Detail – Glen Edward Rogers". Florida Department of Corrections. Retrieved January 8, 2021.
  2. ^ a b c d "Killer Found Guilty in 2nd Murder Case". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 9, 2012.
  3. ^ Cable News Network (CNN), "Documentary: Serial killer, not O.J., killed Simpson and Goldman", November 21, 2012; by Alan Duke https://www.cnn.com/2012/11/20/justice/o-j-simpson-film-claim/
  4. ^ Chu, Henry (November 12, 1995). "Contradictions Fill Suspect's Past : Manhunt: Some in Glen Rogers' hometown saw him as charming. Others recall troubles, and a hair-trigger temper". Los Angeles Times.
  5. ^ "Rogers Says Claim of 70 Slayings Was in Jest". Los Angeles Times. November 20, 1995. Retrieved October 9, 2012.
  6. ^ Berger, Leslie (November 21, 1995). "Extradition Hearing for Accused Serial Killer Postponed". Los Angeles Times.
  7. ^ "truTV | Funny Because it's tru". truTV.
  8. ^ Streeter, Kurt (July 17, 1999). "Serial Killer Rogers Sentenced to Death". Los Angeles Times.
  9. ^ ROGERS, GLEN E « Profiles on Florida's Death Row. (n.d.). Profiles on Florida's Death Row. Retrieved October 9, 2012, from http://floridadeathrow.wordpress.com/2008/01/03/rogers-glen-e/ Archived December 2, 2012, at archive.today
  10. ^ a b "Suspected Serial Killer Is Arrested in Kentucky". The New York Times. The New York Times. November 14, 1995. Retrieved January 24, 2024.
  11. ^ Alan Duke (November 21, 2012). "Documentary: Serial killer, not O.J., killed Simpson and Goldman". CNN.
  12. ^ "Documentary: Serial killer, not O.J., killed Simpson and Goldman". CNN. November 21, 2012. Retrieved November 29, 2012.
  13. ^ "O.J. Simpson film: Serial killer murdered Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman 9". Toronto Sun. Retrieved November 29, 2012.
  14. ^ a b c Harris, Dan (November 20, 2012). "Serial Killer Murdered Nicole Brown Simpson, New Documentary Claims". ABC News. Retrieved January 1, 2014.
  15. ^ Colburn, Randall (October 17, 2019). "O.J. didn't do it, apparently, in The Murder Of Nicole Brown Simpson". Retrieved April 28, 2024.
  16. ^ "The Casanova Killer". Oxygen Official Site. September 5, 2016. Retrieved August 10, 2018.
  17. ^ Haviland, Lou (December 27, 2019). "You Won't Believe Who 'The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson' Film is Claiming Actually Killed Her". Showbiz Cheatsheet.
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