Van Nuys Man Is Sought in Slaying : Crime: Glen Rogers, charged with strangling woman and setting her afire, is also wanted for questioning in Ohio man’s death.

A man who Los Angeles police say strangled and then set fire to a Santa Monica woman in Van Nuys has a record of involvement with fires--including attacking police officers with a blowtorch--and is wanted for questioning in connection with a man’s death, officials said Tuesday.

Glen Rogers, 33, was charged Monday with the death of Sandra Gallagher, 31, whose corpse was found in her burning pickup truck in Van Nuys late last month. Rogers, who is also wanted for questioning in the death of an Ohio man, remains at large.

Los Angeles police say Gallagher, a mother of three, was killed after she gave Rogers a ride home from a Van Nuys bar the night of Sept. 29.

They now believe Rogers is heading toward his hometown of Hamilton, Ohio, a small city north of Cincinnati where Rogers’ name elicits immediate recognition from police.

“He’s done a number of things out here in Ohio,” Hamilton Police Detective James Nugent said. “He’s quite a character.”

In August, 1986, according to a deputy clerk at the Hamilton municipal courthouse, Rogers was arrested on suspicion of trying to set fire to furniture behind a house and was later convicted of misdemeanor charges.

In 1991, Nugent said, Rogers stuck a blowtorch through a peephole in his front door and tried to scorch Hamilton police officers who were responding to a domestic violence call made by Rogers’ girlfriend. He pleaded guilty to charges stemming from that incident, the deputy court clerk said.

In September, 1993, Rogers moved in with 71-year-old Mark Peters of Ohio, according to Peters’ daughter, Joan Burkhart. A month later, both had vanished, Burkhart said Tuesday.

What the local coroner identified as Peters’ remains were found by Hamilton detectives in January, 1994, bound under a pile of furniture in an abandoned house in rural Kentucky. However, the Lee County coroner in Kentucky was unable to determine the cause of death, and detectives say they cannot yet call the Peters case a homicide.

Kentucky state police detective Floyd McIntosh said Rogers had been staying with a family in the area during the time Peters was missing. Both the Hamilton Police Department and Kentucky state troopers said they want to talk with Rogers in connection with the case, and one Hamilton police official said that based on information from confidential informants, Rogers is a suspect in the case.

But when Peters’ remains were discovered, Rogers had already moved to the Los Angeles area.

In the summer of 1994, Rogers allegedly had a fight with his then-girlfriend, went to her closet in their Hollywood apartment, doused her clothes with gasoline and set them afire, LAPD Detective Stephen Fisk said. Arson charges against Rogers were later dropped when his girlfriend refused to testify, Fisk said.

Rogers eventually moved to an apartment building in Van Nuys, where he worked as resident manager, LAPD Detective Mike Coblentz said. He also supported himself by doing free-lance painting.

Rogers was in the process of being evicted from his building when he met Sandra Gallagher at a Van Nuys bar on the night of Sept. 29, Coblentz said.

Both were regulars at the bar, Fisk said. Gallagher “was known to help people out in the bar,” Fisk said, and when employees there would not give Rogers a lift to his apartment that night, Gallagher volunteered.

“I think that when she saw the level of interaction in the bar . . . she figured these people knew [Rogers]” and felt comfortable giving him a ride, Fisk said.

Detectives said they believe Rogers strangled Gallagher after they left the bar, then left her body in her pickup truck behind another apartment building, set the truck afire and left town. Coblentz said Rogers took a Greyhound bus to Jackson, Miss., where he checked out of a motel on Oct. 11.

“He’s really something,” said Coblentz. “I feel he’s dangerous, and I’d like to get him in jail.”